Bed-blocking is the act of remaining in a hospital bed because you have nowhere else to go. Unfortunately for the NHS, thousands of patients have been doing the aforementioned behaviour and as a result, the NHS is buckling as it runs out of room for patients.
Bed-blocking is at a four-year high which is bad news for the NHS, costing the NHS a giant £34 million a month.
Reports are attributing this increase to the lack of social care funding which has left patients with nowhere to go.
Chris Hopson of the Foundation Trust Network says, “We are going back downhill to 15 years ago, when the NHS was an international joke because you had to wait years for treatment and wait potentially most of a day in an A&E department.
“Nobody wants to go back to that, but you get what you pay for.”
A study from Cambridge University found that nearly 1 in 5 hospital beds is occupied by somebody who does not need it.
“The truth is we’ve got thousands of people trapped in hospital; older people who are well enough to go home but can’t. Rather than rising to the challenge of an ageing society, care of older people is getting worse.” Explains Any Burnham, Shadow health secretary.
“We have a system that hospitalises rather than providing basic support in people’s homes.”