Discharge system ‘a mess’, says Cooper

“System reforms” are needed to fix the “patchwork” of policies aimed at preventing hospital admissions and speeding up discharge, the health and social care secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper said improvements could be made “even within existing resources and even within existing systems” if organisations worked together.

She said: “Where I do think there are system reforms that are needed [are of the] patchwork process of, how do you solve the fact that there are people in acute hospitals who shouldn’t be in there?

“We’ve had layer upon layer of different patchwork attempts to think, ‘okay, this is how we’ll prevent people going into hospital. Okay, this is how we’ll get people out faster.’ Maybe into intermediate care, maybe into some NHS-funded, maybe some local council funded, and it’s all a mess.

“And actually you could do that in a much more effective way… even within existing resources, even within existing systems, there’s a lot of things that, actually, if everybody came together, we could make improvements.”

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Source: HSJ, 13 August 2026