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Lords vote delays bed blocking bill for a year

Campaigners have welcomed a significant victory in the vote by the House of Lords to delay the government’s bed blocking bill by a year but are still pressing to throw the reform out altogether.

The Lords voted by 153 to 123 to delay the introduction of the Community Care (delayed discharges) Bill by 12 months until April 2005. The bill would make local councils pay hospital trusts a fine – expected to be £100 to £120 a day – for each patient who has to stay in hospital because home care arrangements are not ready.

Although the amendment is fully expected to be overturned when the bill returns to the House of Commons, the government has now conceded it will delay the change by six months to September this year.

The Local Government Association, which has led a coalition of local authorities, NHS managers and doctors against the bill, welcomed the Lords vote as a ‘clear recognition’ that the proposals were ‘ill-conceived and fundamentally unworkable’.

Opponents, who also include the BMA and the NHS Confederation, believe that fining councils for delayed discharges will undermine local partnerships and divert funds from community services.

Chair of the BMA’s community care committee Dr Andrew Dearden said: ‘Social service departments have been underfunded and struggling for resources for many years. Charging hefty “fines” will place an even greater burden on them.’

He acknowledged bed blocking was a major problem, sometimes leading to hospitals to become ‘gridlocked’ as patients admitted as medical emergencies ended up in surgical wards which causing planned operations to be cancelled. But he added: ‘People need to be discharged in a timely and organised way so they get the right care in the right place at the right time.’

Delayed discharges reduced

Meanwhile a report from the National Audit Office published last month has found good progress in reducing delayed discharges – with numbers of blocked beds reduced by 12 per cent in the past year – but urged that more action is needed to increase local councils’ capacity.

The report, Ensuring the effective discharge of older patients from NHS acute hospitals, found that more than 4,000 people over 75 remain in hospitals despite being fit to leave on any given day.

Efforts to tackle the problem were leading to real improvements but there were still difficulties in NHS trusts’ arrangements for discharge as well as shortages in community and residential care.

The report is available at www.nao.gov.uk