Hospital Beds: Social Care

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of hospital beds currently occupied by patients who could be discharged to their own homes or to residential care if social care support were available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)]

There are around 13,000 people in hospital who do not meet the clinical criteria to reside, including, but not limited to, people waiting to go home and people awaiting access to residential care. We constantly look to reduce these delayed discharges to ease flow in the system, and we have provided a £500 million discharge fund to support people to be discharged at the right time, to the right place and with the right support.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for answering the Question. Does he understand that many of us will think it is a complete disgrace that, for a long time now, hospital beds have been blocked by people who could be discharged into the community or residential care? These people would be better off and have a decent quality of life. Should we not be making this a high priority, instead of saying that we are planning to do this? We have heard that for so long.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

It absolutely is a high priority. Noble Lords have heard me say many times that the key to the whole system is flow through the system, to relieve times in A&E and ambulance wait times. That flow depends on us discharging the 13% of beds that are currently held up. That is why we put the £500 million discharge fund in place and will put £2.8 billion of funding next year, and £4.7 billion the year after, to solve exactly this problem.