New research by later-life care directory Autumna has revealed the best and worst performing regions for speed of discharge of the elderly from hospital.
While 95.6 per cent of elderly patients in the East of England are admitted into the care of a provider within a week of being declared fit to leave – and a discharge process of 0-2 days is reported by half of care providers in the North East – half of providers in Scotland say discharge takes more than a week on average, while 15.3 per cent in the West Midlands and 10 per cent in Yorkshire & The Humber say it takes more than three weeks on average.
Nearly eight in 10 providers in the North West report a positive relationship with hospital discharge teams, but fewer than half of respondents in the West Midlands agree. While nearly two-thirds of providers in the North West feel the discharge teams understand the care they offer, only 42.9 per cent of the respondents in Scotland believe this to be the case.
Ninety-three per cent of care providers nationally would like to see government reform of the hospital discharge process, with the figure ranging from 85.7 per cent in the North East to 100 per cent of providers in Scotland. Nationally, 85 per cent of care providers who have a positive relationship with their local hospital discharge teams still want the process reformed.
Debbie Harris, founder and managing director of Autumna, said: “Our survey, which is the first to probe the experiences of social care providers of the hospital discharge system, shows a system that is failing due to poor relationships caused by poor communication.
“Our findings are a wake-up call to Kier Starmer and Wes Streeting that the system is broken and urgently needs reforming. The pressures are only going to get worse as our population gets older, so we need to fix the system now, before it completely breaks down.”
Commenting on the findings, Professor Martin Green OBE, chief executive of Care England, said: “Autumna’s Hospital Discharge Report: Care Providers’ Perspectives clearly outlines a system that is failing and will only get worse unless remedial action is taken. However, this report also highlights the fact that there are solutions, and if people worked effectively with the social care sector and gave it the needed resources, the solutions would be easily and readily available.”
