Glasgow hospitals being hit by delayed discharge as wards forced to close

A total of 157 patients were delayed in hospitals this week when they were due to be discharged. Fifty four of the patients were adults with incapacity with 83 of them aged over 65.

Sharon Wearing, of the city’s health and social care partnership presented the situation to yesterday’s integration joint board meeting on Wednesday.

The chief officer of finance and resource said: “We have been impacted by the high number of wards closed now due to Covid or norovirus and that has an impact on us being able to complete our assessments for people who had discharge days before the closure.”

Ms Wearing told the meeting: “As of 23 January we had 157 delays in acute – of this 83 were over 65. Twenty were under 65.” The senior health and social care official also told the meeting about demand for care.

She added: “In the last week we have had 188 referrals to care at home, which includes 57 referrals alone on Monday which is a significant rise to what we have seen in previous years.

Ms Wearing continued. “Forty five per cent are completely new referrals and that is up eight per cent. At our care homes we had 30 complex discharges to care homes in the last week.” Ms Wearing said: “We are having daily meetings with our colleagues in acute to support the pressure points in the hospital and there is a lot of work ongoing there to support that.”

The meeting heard people living longer with more complex medical needs is creating a greater demand on the NHS.