Jeane Freeman under pressure over rise in delayed discharge figures

Health secretary Jeane Freeman is under increasing pressure after new figures showed the number of people stuck in Scottish hospitals despite being well enough to go home has risen again.

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said delayed discharge was her number one priority, but figures are continuing to rise.

Freeman said tackling delayed discharge would be her number one priority as health secretary when she was appointed in the role a year ago - four years after the government pledged to "eradicate" the problem with a £100m investment.

But according to new NHS statistics out today, 1451 people were affected by delayed discharge in May this year, a rise of four per cent compared with the same time last year when 1181 patients were stuck in hospital and also up from April this year, when it stood at 1366.

As a result, Scotland's NHS lost 45,061 bed days in May and accrued a financial cost of £234 per day for each delay - a total of £10.5 million.

Of those waiting to go home from hospital, 1,181 were delayed for more than three days, with a a lack of health and social care support accounting for 884 delays, complex needs for 24 and family reasons for just 33 delays.

The delayed discharge figures fluctuate from month to month, but they peaked in October last year at 1,542.

He added: “Delayed discharge is a serious issue which is bad for patients and ends up costing our NHS millions of pounds a year. We need to start tackling this, but instead we have seen no direction from the SNP on how to improve social care and allow these people to leave hospital.

“The SNP can’t blame anyone else for these statistics – the responsibility for this lies solely with them. Jeane Freeman said that addressing delayed discharge was her number one priority. A year into the job and the situation is getting worse on her watch.”

Scottish Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health, Monica Lennon MSP, said each delayed discharge was a "drain on NHS resources" and put people at risk of hospital-acquired infections.

“In the month of May alone this cost our NHS more than £10million - that’s money that could be spent on medicines, more staff and new equipment. This is no reflection on the hardworking staff but the performance of our NHS is worsening under Jeane Freeman.

"The integration of health and social care services will not succeed unless SNP Ministers make the right resources available.”

And Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton said the government needed to ease pressure on hospitals by boosting resources for the care sector.

“The Health Secretary should be embarrassed that so many patients are stuck in hospital when they’re well enough to go home, simply because the government hasn’t given care services the resources they need," he said.

“The scarcity of community care packages is stacking more and more pressure on beds in front line services. We already know that when patients are trapped in hospital their physical health and mental wellbeing often deteriorate. The Health Secretary must take immediate action to eliminate these long waits and get healthy patients back home.”

However a spokesperson for the Scottish Government said it was investing £700m this year to support social care, and the integration of health and social care services, adding: “People should not need to spend unnecessary time in hospital once treatment is complete. We are continuing to work closely with health and social care partnerships to ensure the good practice which exists in many areas is spread across Scotland.”