Delayed hospital discharges have cost NHS £293m on Yousaf’s watch, says Labour

Delayed discharges in the NHS have cost taxpayers £293 million since June 2021, according to analysis by Scottish Labour.

More than one million bed days were lost from June 2021 to January this year because people were in hospital longer than they needed to be, the party said.

The analysis of Public Health Scotland figures saw a real-terms calculator applied to the most recent estimated daily bed cost of £262 in 2019/20.

It found that of the 472,354 days lost to bed-blocking in June 2021 to March 2022, the estimated cost to the NHS totalled £131,078,235 – based on an average bed cost of £277.50 per day.

Humza Yousaf, who is in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and first minister, became Health Secretary in May 2021.

Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said the analysis shows the crisis has “spiralled out of control” since Mr Yousaf took on the job.

Delayed discharge occurs when a person is ready to leave hospital but cannot because an appropriate care package is not in place.

In January, the Scottish Government announced an £8 million commitment to provide an extra 300 interim care home beds to allow patients to be discharged quicker.

Ms Baillie said: “Delayed discharge has spiralled out of control since Humza Yousaf become Health Secretary, costing our NHS vast sums of money it can’t afford to waste.

“This astonishing dereliction of duty has been damaging for patients, staff and services.

“This is a huge burden on our NHS at a time when services are already stretched to breaking point and every single pound of public money counts.

“Humza Yousaf has been the worst Health Secretary in the history of devolution and it beggars belief that he is angling for the top job.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Addressing delayed discharge remains of critical importance, and although over 96% of all discharges are without delay, we allocated an additional £8 million to support health and social care partnerships to make use of additional interim care beds to help ease delayed discharge.

“As part of the ministerial advisory group, we continue to work tirelessly with health boards and health and social care partnerships to ensure we are doing everything we can to support people out of acute settings and back into the community when it is clinically safe to do so.”

As of March 6, there were 633 patients in interim care placements, the Scottish Government said.