National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Bill Shorten has revealed around 177 WA hospital beds are being taken up by patients who do not need to be there.
That is because those patients are medically fit for discharge but are waiting on arrangements through the NDIS to be able to leave hospital.
That not only affects the patients, but also the healthcare system, which is struggling to find enough beds to care for patients who need them.
Mr Shorten said the cost of keeping a "profoundly disabled" person in hospital when they could be elsewhere was at least $2,000 a night, meaning the total bill to the taxpayer in WA was likely around $10 million a month.
"I'm sure the health system could do a lot with [that money], but it's also about the people," he told ABC Radio Perth.
"There's 1,500 people [across the country] who are profoundly disabled who we need to be setting up for their forever accommodation.
"It's as basic as too much red tape, too slow decision making, right through to more complex issues like do we have appropriate housing to move people to?"
WA has second-worst backlog in nation
Mr Shorten said the system was complicated because supports ranged from simple home modifications to around-the-clock care, and in some cases involved managing "severe psychosocial conditions".
A WA government spokesperson said there were 120 NDIS-related long-stay patients in the state's hospitals in June, with 67 having a mental health diagnosis.
Mr Shorten's estimate that the number had risen to 177 as of about a month ago means WA has the second-worst backlog in the country, when the number of patients are compared against population.
He said it was something he was working on with the WA government, including Disability Minister Don Punch.
"I think we can make progress. Some people have told me it's impossible, I don't accept that," he said.
"The only thing which is impossible is if we don't try … 160 days average waiting time across Australia is just madness."
Plan to get patients out of hospital sooner
To address those delays, Mr Shorten has set new targets for the National Disability Insurance Agency, which administers the scheme.
A planner will need to meet with each person within four days of them being ready for discharge, and a plan will need to be completed within 15 to 30 days.
"There is enough money in the system to pay for these people's care, and it'll be cheaper for the taxpayer overall to have a person in their own home or appropriate accommodation than hospital," he said.
"But one of the problems I think is that the states are responsible for the hospitals, the federal government's responsible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and too often levels of government don't talk to each other properly.
"We've got to fix that, and I want to use the challenge of hospital discharge to try and get people out of their silos, talking to each other."
Older patients already being transitioned into aged care
This year's state budget included a $252 million "reform package" to improve care in hospitals, with $74.1 million set aside to move long-stay patients out of hospitals.
Most of that money, $59.5 million, was slated for 120 aged care beds, to give those patients somewhere else to stay and address what Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson described as an "abject failure" of Commonwealth agencies.
"Not only does that free up beds, but importantly it provides a better quality of life for those patients who don't want to be in hospital and they don't need to be in hospital," she said at the time.
A WA government spokesperson said between January and June, 163 NDIS-related long stay patients were discharged from hospital.
In any given week, the spokesperson said about 60 older people were discharged from metropolitan hospitals to transitional or residential aged care.
They said all 120 beds announced in May to help transition older people from hospital were operational.
