Discharging patients from hospital without care packages in place will increase the chances of them dying, leading doctors have warned. The British Medical Association (BMA) said it rejects the guidance to "change the risk threshold" for releasing people from hospital.
The union said that while it agreed that longstanding patient flow challenges required remedy, any decision to discharge patients from wards without proper social care support would "transfer the liability and risk to clinicians". Wales' seven health boards currently have nearly 1,800 patients medically well enough to leave hospital, but many of them will still need assistance once they return home.
Dr Iona Collins, chair of the BMA's Welsh Council said: "You can't pass the responsibility for a failure to deliver services over to the hands of the doctors. We have not created this situation, and it is not for us to now put our own medical registrations on the line by making decisions that we would not make because we do not believe those decisions are safe. Patients, their families and carers will bear the consequences of this new policy, which we fear has not been risk assessed."
