‘The Longest Wait to Leave’ highlights dual issue of corridor care and delayed discharges
Age UK has published a report entitled ‘The Longest Wait to Leave: Tackling the delayed discharges that help to drive corridor care’.
The report documents how older people can experience harm at every stage of their journey into, through and out of hospital due to delays in waiting for an ambulance, during their time in A&E (waiting for a decision on being admitted to hospital), waiting for a bed on a ward, and delayed discharge when they are well enough to go home. Statistics in the report show that 60% of 12+ hour A&E waits and 85% of delayed discharges affect older people.
The report goes on to look at the causes of these delays, illustrates good practice examples through case studies and provides recommendations.
Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, says:
“Policy makers have stopped talking about delayed discharges, but they are high and rising – truly a crisis hiding in plain sight. They do enormous harm to older people and cost the NHS and the taxpayer an absolute fortune. What’s more, we will never end the horror of corridor care at the front door of hospitals, for as long as we fail to get a grip on the problem of delayed discharges at the back door.
Our report shows how terrible the impact on older people is when they are medically fit for discharge, but the arrangements cannot be put in place quickly enough or at all to allow this to happen. They are the victims in these situations, and that’s why we feel very strongly that the term ‘bed blockers’, which contains more than a tinge of ageism, should never be used again.”
Read the report here: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/care–support/the-longest-wait-to-leave.pdf