Hospital uses fines to tackle 'bed-blocking'

10:04am Thursday 19th January 2006

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FED-UP bosses at Salisbury District Hospital are slapping fines on Wiltshire county council, in a bid to free beds of patients fit to leave but with nowhere to go.

But council chiefs argue the penalties could backfire, as money to pay them comes from funds being used to come up with solutions to the problem.

In recent months, the hospital has seen an increase in the number of bed-blockers', some of whom have been stuck on wards for up to 130 days longer than necessary because of a lack of care-home places.

The situation has become such a problem that, from January 1, Salisbury healthcare NHS trust began fining the council £100 per day for each patient taking up a bed they did not need.

A hospital spokesman confirmed the council was currently responsible for 16 delayed discharge patients, and the fines would help provide emergency beds to replace those being blocked.

"These are elderly people who are medically fit to be discharged and now need further care in an appropriate community setting," he said.

"The council needs to find alternative ways of caring for these people, away from an acute hospital setting, and the trust has worked closely with the council to find suitable solutions.

"With demand for emergency care increasing, the trust has to open up extra beds to treat emergency patients while people who are medically fit to be discharged remain in hospital," he said.

But the county council's director of adult and community services, Dr Ray Jones, said the problems stemmed from NHS penny-pinching.

"We are picking up the costs of all these services that the NHS now says are the council's responsibility, but we have had no extra money from anywhere to pay for them," he said.

"We are having to ration our services, and some of those people who need our services, including delayed discharges, aren't getting them."

Dr Jones believes the "unfortunate" fines could have an effect opposite to that intended. There is a danger we shall find the number of delayed discharges increasing," he said.

"What was being used on trying to get people out of hospital and preventing them needing to go there in the first place is now just going on fines."

And he believes they would not have been introduced were the primary care trusts not trying to plug budget deficits.

"The NHS in Wiltshire is having to save around £6m if it weren't for that, I don't think the penalties would be happening."