Number of patients 'medically fit' to leave hospital increases

The number of patients in hospitals who are ‘medically fit’ to leave has increased in January, despite NHS England targets for trusts to dramatically reduce the numbers.

Internal data seen by HSJ suggests there were an average of 12,819 patients who no longer met the ‘criteria to reside’ in NHS hospitals in the week to January 23 – up from around 10,500 before the Christmas period.

Last month, NHS England told local systems to dramatically reduce their numbers of medically fit patients who remained in hospital, as they aimed to free up beds amid a surge in covid-19 admissions fuelled by the omicron wave. It told local leaders “a significant proportion of discharge delays are within the gift of hospitals to solve”.

The message was reiterated by NHSE’s regional teams at the start of January, with systems told to reduce their numbers of medically fit patients by between 30 and 50 per cent.

Yet the proportion of ‘medically fit’ for discharge patients occupying NHS general, acute or critical care beds has also been rising, from around 12% in December to around 14% in mid-January.

Delayed discharges are frequently cited as the main cause of long delays for patients being admitted through hospitals’ emergency departments, which have significantly worsened in recent months.

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Source: HSJ, 26 January 2022