Figures released by Public Health Scotland show delayed discharge continues to be a concern across Ayrshire.
The numbers have increased by 14.7 per cent in Ayrshire and Arran between March 2022 and March 2023.
Delayed discharge is when a patient is medically cleared to go home but cannot leave hospital, often because a social care package is not in place or there is a lack of places in care homes, or sheltered housing.
In Ayrshire and Arran the number of bed days occupied stood at 5,545, compared to 4,832, representing the 14.7 per cent increase.
South Scotland Labour List MSP, Colin Smyth, said: “These figures continue to show the scale of how many people are affected by delayed discharge across our area.
“When comparing with last year, every month we’re seeing rises in Ayrshire and Arran, Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders, and this is a real concern.
“For many years now I have been calling for a strategy from the Scottish Government to eradicate delayed discharge but nothing has changed.
“In 2015, the SNP vowed to put an end to delayed discharge but, as these figures show, we are so far away from achieving that.
“It is time for delayed discharge figures to start improving and I am demanding that the Scottish Government take serious action.
“The Government’s ‘solution’ is apparently to pay health boards to discharge patients, not back home where they want to be, but into care homes where they do not want to be and, in rural areas, those care homes are often miles from their family.
“That will not work: while many boards are already buying up beds in care homes, there are not enough because those homes also cannot recruit care staff.”
He added: “We need long term investment, including tackling the woeful low level of sheltered housing locally, but the Government could start by backing Labour’s plans to pay care workers a fair wage of £12 an hour, rising to £15 which would help with the recruitment crisis.”
But Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care, Michael Matheson, said the latest discharge figures showed that between the February and March 2023, there has been a 10 per cent decrease in the number of people delayed in hospital.
He said: “This encouraging trend highlights the great work which is ongoing across our health and social care system to address this issue and is down to the hard work of our NHS and social care staff.
“I am grateful for their continued exceptional efforts and we will continue to work with health boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships to ensure this progress continues.”
Joanne Edwards, acute services director, said: “At this time pressures remain high across our health and care system in Ayrshire and Arran, including within our community based services. This unfortunately leads to delayed transfers of care across a number of settings including acute, community and mental health hospitals, as such the associated bed days and costs are also incurred across the system.
“We continue to focus on the decongestion of our acute hospitals, this includes the transfer of care from hospital to community settings when a patient no longer requires the treatment provided in our acute hospitals.
“Whilst we acknowledge that delayed transfers of care have increased across Ayrshire, we also recognise there are different challenges across the three local Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) in relation to demand and capacity and the ability to respond to the need for community based care provision.
“NHS Ayrshire & Arran works closely as a whole system with the three HSCPs to minimise delays as much as possible to ensure that patients receive the right care in the right place.”
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