South Scotland MSP claims delayed discharge has cost more than £42 million in Dumfries and Galloway
dailyrecord.co.ukDumfries and Galloway’s problem with delayed discharge in hospitals may have cost more than £42 million since 2015. And South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth also claims that more than 150,000 bed days have been lost to the problem over that time.
The figures were compiled by My Smyth’s Scottish Labour party, which claims the cost of delayed discharge – when a patient is medically cleared to leave hospital but can’t, often because there is no care package in place – in Scotland has topped £1.2 billion since 2015.
Mr Smyth said: “It’s been almost a decade since the SNP promised to end delayed discharge – but our region is still paying the price for their failure. “Make no mistake – this is a disaster over a decade in the making, with successive health secretaries – including Humza Yousaf – completely unable to tackle delayed discharge. “I have repeatedly raised this issue since I was elected but the situation is getting worse and worse.
Medical professionals are clear that the failure to tackle delayed discharge is crippling our NHS and putting lives at risk. “We cannot have patients left in hospital unnecessarily and the public purse drained due to poor provision of care for those leaving hospital. “We need long term investment, including tackling low level of sheltered housing and loss of care homes locally, but the Government could start by backing Labour’s plans to pay care workers a fair wage moving towards £15 per hour as quickly as possible, which would help with the recruitment crisis.” The figures were compiled using data from Public Health Scotland.
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