NHS crisis: More than one in five hospital beds in Bucks lost to bed blocking

More than one in five hospital beds in Bucks were taken up by bed blockers who were fit for discharge but stuck waiting on wards last week, as the NHS continues to grapple with overflowing wards and unprecedented pressure on emergency departments.

It comes after the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) told MPs the nation’s hospital wards are “hideously” busy due to the low number of beds per head of the population.

Problems with A&E care will not improve unless the government focuses on boosting bed numbers and lowering occupancy rates, he told members of the Health and Social Care Committee.

Earlier this month NationalWorld revealed how up to 60% of patients admitted as an emergency through A&E are facing 12-hour trolley waits for a bed to become available in some parts of the country, while more than 19 out of 20 hospital trusts are currently breaching ‘safe’ levels of bed occupancy.

Now analysis of weekly winter pressure data from NHS England reveals how in the week ending January 22 more than one in five general and acute hospital beds for adults in Bucks were taken up by patients whose discharge had been delayed.

Delayed discharges are commonly referred to as bed blocking – where a patient does not leave hospital despite being medically fit to leave, most commonly because they are stuck waiting for a social care package to help them return home to be put in place, according to RCEM president Dr Adrian Boyle. Prolonged stays in hospital can be detrimental to patients, as well as having a knock-on effect on new patients facing delays in being admitted.

Across the seven-day period NationalWorld looked at, an average of 14.4% of beds, or more than one in seven, were lost to bed blocking every day in hospitals in England.

But at the Bucks Healthcare NHS Trust, more than one in five beds (21.7%) were taken up by patients who did not need to be in hospital.

Last month the RCEM estimated that between 300 and 500 patients were dying each week because of A&E delays.

Yesterday the government set out a plan for emergency healthcare which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said would deliver “the largest and fastest-ever improvement in emergency waiting times in the NHS’s history”.

NationalWorld analysed the latest data for each hospital trust to find where in England is losing the most capacity to bed blockers who are fit for discharge. The figures exclude 13 acute wards which do not operate a general purpose, 24-hour A&E for adults, such as specialist eye and heart hospitals or women’s and children’s trusts.

Note on methodology: the proportions in this article are a best estimate arrived at by combing two sets of data - a count of delayed discharges, and a count of open general and acute beds. The former technically covers critical care as well as general and acute wards, while the latter does not include critical care. If there are critical care patients counted as bed blockers, this could therefore alter the proportion of beds lost to bed blocking. It is however unlikely and unusual that a patient would be discharged straight from critical care, according to NHS England.