The number of delayed discharges is rising and almost 1,300 beds were unavailable across the State in March, writes MARTIN WALL.
ALMOST 1,300 beds in public hospitals are out of use, the board of the Health Service Executive has been told.
In a report to the board, HSE management said there were 426 inpatient beds and 16 day-case beds unavailable across the hospital system in March as a result of financial cutbacks or for other reasons.
The board was also told that the position in relation to delayed discharges – where patients who have finished the acute phase of their treatment remain in a hospital bed because they cannot be sent home or where there is a lack of suitable step-down accommodation – is getting worse.
The management report said the number of delayed discharges had risen by more than 49 per cent since 2007 and that there had been a significant increase since January 2009. The report said the number of delayed discharges since January had continued to increase to an average of 757 a week compared with averages of 668 and 514 in the past two years.
The report said the average number of delayed discharges in March had “continued to grow to 834 per week”.
“There has been a significant growth [from 80 a week to 180 a week] in discharge delays from hospital due to patients having higher medical needs [ie securing an appropriate step-down facility/nursing home place that can accommodate higher than normal needs] and patients either requiring or requesting access to a public long-term care bed [from 70 a week to 260 per week].
“Patients may require access to a public long- term care bed for financial reasons, or due to the ability of such services to care for higher medical need and/or higher dependency level patients.
“Patients delayed because of factors relating to subvention [either the subvention application process was in train but not yet completed, patients were awaiting funding approval, or patients were sourcing an appropriate step down facility] rose from 130 per week to 200 per week,” the report said.
The HSE management report said the number of unavailable beds across all hospitals in March 2009 was 426 inpatient and 16 day-case beds and the number of delayed discharges in the month was 834.
“In total, in March, there were almost 1,300 beds that could not be accessed across hospitals for hospital activity. Of the beds closed within the hospital system, 270 were closed for planned cost containment purposes with a further 70 not available for a variety of other reasons.
“These other reasons can relate to staffing issues or hospital reconfiguration issues,” it said.The report maintained that the numbers of beds not available were approximately equal across the surgical and medical groupings.