'Complex' patient stuck in Scottish hospital for seven years amid NHS delayed discharge crisis

The Scottish Tories submitted Freedom of Information requests to health boards across Scotland to shed light on the scale of the delayed discharge crisis.

NHS Fife confirmed one patient has been waiting for 2,576 days - or seven years and 21 days - despite being deemed well enough to leave hospital.

However, the health board said the figures provided to the Tories included learning disability and mental health patients with highly specialist needs, or who are gradually transitioning from hospital care to the community.

“Such patients are not ordinarily included within the regularly published statistics on delayed discharges, and are excluded as what is referred to as ‘code 9’ or ‘code 100’ non-standard delays,” the health board said.

“As such, it is inappropriate to compare these with patients in acute and community hospitals awaiting packages of care, whose needs are vastly different. According to the most recently published statistics by Public Health Scotland, the average standard delay in Fife was 14 days at the point of discharge.”

On the individual listed as delayed for over seven years, a spokesperson from the Fife health and social care partnership said: "We cannot comment on individual patients for reasons of confidentiality.

"However, this is a very complex case involving an individual who requires highly complex care in a specialist facility. An interim placement would be inappropriate and unreasonable, and not in the individual’s best interests.”

Elsewhere, a patient in NHS Highland has had their discharge delayed for four years and 147 days, while another in NHS Lothian has been waiting for more than three years.

Tory MSP Dr Sandesh Gulhane, his party’s health spokesman, said the figures should be a “source of shame”.

He said: “It is scarcely believable that any patient would be stuck in one of Scotland’s hospitals for over seven years.

“Patients up and down the country are suffering shocking waits of several years despite the-then SNP health secretary Shona Robison promising to eradicate delayed discharge almost a decade ago.

“These disgraceful figures should be a source of shame for the successive SNP health secretaries who have followed her. They have allowed a permanent crisis to exist in Scotland’s hospitals and frontline social care services.

“SNP ministers have spent the last few years scandalously squandering tens of millions of taxpayers’ money on their reckless plans for a centralised National Care Service, which would have done nothing to help suffering patients right now.

“They have only finally ditched these plans at the last possible minute and bowed to the inevitable.

“That wasted money could and should have been spent on funding local care services, which are best placed to meet patients’ needs. Now their National Care Service has finally been axed, these figures must be an urgent wake-up call to sort this crisis out and ensure patients can get out of hospital as soon as they are fit to do so.”

A spokesman for NHS Highland said: “Like many other health and social care partnerships across Scotland, we are experiencing high levels of patients experiencing delays to their discharge from hospital.

“There are a variety of reasons for these delays, including availability of care home placements and ensuring appropriate levels of support are in place before patients are discharged. The remote and rural nature of Highland also means that we have our own unique challenges in delivering care.

“We continue to face real pressures on services in the community and staffing remains an ongoing challenge, particularly in the care sector. We do, however, remain committed to reducing the number of people delayed in hospital by working across both our health and social care services to provide appropriate care for people in their own home or as close to their home as possible.”

Jim Crombie, deputy chief executive of NHS Lothian, said: “Very often when a patient is delayed in hospital for a long time, it is because they require a significant and complex, bespoke package of care that is difficult for health and social care partnerships to provide in the community.

“The issue of delayed discharge is a complicated challenge for the NHS, health and social care partnerships and council colleagues.

“We know that home is the best place for a patient to recover as soon as they are well enough and as a result, we continue to work closely with our four health and social care partners in Lothian to tackle delayed discharges, including increasing community health care capacity, home care and care home availability.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “While we cannot comment on individual patients, there are some highly complex cases - including mental health patients or hospital based complex clinical care patients – where unfortunately it extremely difficult to find an appropriate care package.

“Long-term hospital inpatient cases of this nature remain rare, and the latest published official statistics shows the median length of delay for NHS Fife was 20 days.

“We have seen a reduction in delayed discharge in many councils in recent months and are working closely with all councils to review performance and escalate where we are not seeing necessary improvements in delayed discharge.”