NHS Lanarkshire spend £15 million to keep patients needlessly in hospital beds

Alarming figures have revealed NHS Lanarkshire spent almost £15 million keeping patients in hospital – the third highest in the country.

Figures published by ISD Scotland revealed 63,921 lost bed days last year.

The most up-to-date estimated cost of each delay is £234, working out to a total of £14.95 million.

NHS Lanarkshire was below NHS Lothian, which spent £30.66 million on delayed discharge and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which recorded a figure of £14.98 million.

Conservative list MSP Graham Simpson described the figures as “deeply worrying”.

He said: “This is money which could be spent on patient care.

“Despite the promises to completely eradicate delayed discharge, the problem continues to worsen.

“NHS Lanarkshire simply doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the demand on their services and patients and their families will be increasingly distressed by these unnecessary hospital stays.

“Patients in Lanarkshire are stuck in hospital because of this SNP government’s inability to solve this problem.”

Wishaw SNP MSP Clare Adamson admitted delayed discharge “remains a challenge for the NHS in Scotland”.

Ms Adamson said: “Integration of Health and Social Care aims to improve care and support for those who use health and social care services and equip our services for future challenges.

“Integration authorities are responsible for £8.7 billion of funding previously managed separately by health boards and councils.

“In 2018/19 the overall package of NHS frontline investment in social care and integration was over £550 million, and the health resource budget will increase by at least £2 billion by the end of this Parliament.

“Following the draft budget for 2019/20, the Scottish Government are increasing the package of investment in social care and integration to over £700 million, underlining its commitment to support older people and disabled people and to recognise the vital role unpaid carers play.

“I would like to pay tribute to the hard work of the Integration Services and the NHS workers who are dedicated to seeing improvements in this area.”

The total for Scotland in 2018 was a staggering £120.47 million.

Ross McGuffie, chief officer of Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire, said: “Reducing delayed discharges is one of our key priorities.

“We are pleased that we are seeing improvements in comparison to previous years, although we are not being complacent and continue to take steps to improve this further.”