{"id":605,"date":"2026-07-08T03:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T03:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=605"},"modified":"2026-07-08T03:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T03:57:14","slug":"nhs-bed-blocking-bill-rises-to-2-7-billion-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=605","title":{"rendered":"NHS Bed-Blocking Bill Rises to \u00a32.7 Billion a Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NHS<\/div>

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The cost of delayed discharges in the NHS has risen to \u00a32.7 billion, up 7.5% in a year, figures show.<\/p>\n

Analysis by the King\u2019s Fund charity showed one in 10 hospital beds at any one time are taken up with people who are medically fit to leave.<\/p>\n

Delays in discharge occur for a number of reasons, including problems in arranging social care in people\u2019s own homes and issues with care home spaces and funding. This has a knock-on impact on hospitals, with a lack of beds meaning other patients can end up on corridors while they wait for a bed, leading to so-called \u201ccorridor care\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last year, there were nearly 13,000 delayed discharges daily, up 300 on the 2024-2025 daily average. The King\u2019s Fund said the cost of a bed day has now hit \u00a3562, up from an estimated \u00a3536 last year. As a result, delayed discharges are costing the NHS \u00a32.7 billion a year<\/a>, it said.<\/p>\n

Delayed Discharges Add to A&E and Corridor Care Pressure\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Danielle Jefferies, senior analyst at the King\u2019s Fund, said: \u201cThe rising costs of delayed discharges will put even more pressure on already stretched NHS budgets alongside contributing to longer waits in A&E and more harrowing cases of corridor care.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatients are being left stranded in hospital beds, frustrated at being unable to leave despite being well enough to do so, knowing that sicker patients need their bed with little they can do about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cA range of issues cause this backlog, including stretched adult social care and NHS community services, to administrative quagmires, all of which trickles down into A&E waiting rooms and the consequences are felt acutely by patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolving these issues will, of course, be key to reaching the Government\u2019s goal of ending corridor care by 2029 and reducing the financial and human burden of delayed discharge but it is not just within hospitals and the care system that Government should be looking to for solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, these problems can only be addressed sustainably by reducing incoming demand on hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means the government must be much bolder in tackling wider issues like obesity or moving care out of hospitals by effectively implementing greater community care.\u201d<\/p>\n

It comes as the public are to be asked who should get social care, what people should pay, and what role the state should play to inform a major review into the current \u201cpatched together\u201d system.<\/p>\n

Baroness Louise Casey, who is leading a commission into adult social care in England, has said the system too often creates \u201cagony and uncertainty\u201d for people at the most vulnerable points in their lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cost of delayed discharges in the NHS has risen to \u00a32.7 billion, up 7.5% in a year, figures show. Analysis by the King\u2019s Fund charity showed one in 10 hospital beds at any one time are taken up with people who are medically fit to leave. Delays in discharge occur for a number of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/images\/thumbnail_library\/dreamstime_xl_434849940800450.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1294,1295,1296,1018,527,522],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-bedblocking","tag-bill","tag-billion","tag-nhs","tag-rises","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}