One of the North East's most senior NHS figures has raised concerns about a lack of "urgency" in local government around the "really scary" issue of delayed discharges from hospitals.
Sir James Mackey - who is chief executive of the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust and also the NHS England figure in charge of managing the national elective recovery programme targeting spiralling waiting lists - made the comments at an event held by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) last week. After the event, he agreed to put his remarks on the record.
Sir James told the HSJ event that there was a need to "pull together" across the NHS and local government to tackle delayed discharges - which occur when "medically-fit" patients can not be sent home from hospital due to issues most often around the provision of home care or space in care homes. This results in hospital beds being blocked up and causes issues with "patient flow".
