A HOSPITAL that is £3 million in the red has spent £359,000 caring for two elderly patients who have no medical need to be there.

Both women have been fit enough to leave the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester since April 2004, but have remained on a general ward for the past two years at a cost of £246 a day each. The hospital has begun legal action to have one of the women moved to a home, and has sought solicitors’ advice in the second case.

Winchester and Eastleigh NHS Trust blamed “complicated family and funding issues” for patients not being discharged.

It said that lawyers had been called in after negotiations failed. The hospital is currently accommodating 25 “bed blockers” who are healthy enough to leave.

Vera Hill is stranded as an inpatient until Hampshire County Council organises the two home carers that she needs to help her to dress, wash and prepare meals.

The 92-year-old widow has been in hospital for nine months, and was declared fit enough to leave a month ago.She said: “I want to go to my own home. I want to be independent. I will go daft if I don’t get out of here.”

Powers established in 2004 mean that NHS trusts can fine councils that fail to provide care facilities for patients when they are ready to leave hospital, and last year Winchester and Eastleigh presented Hampshire County Council with a £120,000 bill.

In total the council paid £625,200 in delayed discharge fines to healthcare trusts around the country.

Patricia Banks, the council’s executive member for adult social care, said that “great headway” had been made in reducing delayed discharges, and that 500 extra nursing home beds would be made available under a new scheme this year.

“Our priority is always to ensure that the most appropriate care packages are in place to suit each patient’s individual needs. Delays may occur when it is not possible to locate timely care.”

Winchester and Eastleigh NHS Trust said that bed blocking was a “double-edged sword”, that incurred costs in terms of capacity as well as the purely financial.

Joanna Paul, the trust’s director of operations and performance, said: “The national fining system does help a little but in some cases the real obstacles are family and funding issues.

“Not all types of hospital beds are included and the fine of £100 per day is less than half the actual cost.”

Ms Paul refused to comment in detail on individual cases but said: “Royal Hampshire County Hospital is an acute hospital; once patients are fit to leave it is right that they do so.

“Our aim is for patients to get the right care and if that means going down the legal route then that is what we will do.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “If a person does not need the intensive care given in a hospital then they should be discharged and return to their own home if possible or to another setting, such as a care home.

“The NHS should not have to pay lawyers to make this happen.

“Councils meet some or all of the costs of care homes for the less well-off. The Government has given money to councils to improve these services. The result is that, nationally, between September 2001 and December 2005, the total delays are down from over 7,000 to just over 2,000 — down 69 per cent.”

Michael Summers, chairman of the Patients’ Association, said: “Too many elderly people have nowhere to go and councils should be forced to find proper homes for them. Hospitals should also be more efficient in getting people treated and discharged.

“The sooner someone is out of hospital the quicker they can start to recover. It is expensive for the NHS to keep people in hospital and it prevents others from being treated.”

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