Patient spent more than 600 days in Dumfries and Galloway hospital despite being given the all-clear to leave

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A patient spent more than 600 days in one of the region’s hospitals despite being given the all-clear to go home.And more than 100 patients spent more than three weeks in hospital last year despite being deemed well enough to leave.The bed blocking data was released by the Scottish Liberal Democrats following Freedom of Information requests.Party leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, said: “Delayed discharges have a huge impact on patients and their families.“Once you are declared fit to leave, there is nothing more disheartening than being forced to wait in a hospital as the days tick by.“Delayed discharges involve eye-watering sums of money for the NHS and in the majority of cases it is an entirely avoidable problem.“Most people are waiting on a care home place, social care support to enable them to live in their own home or for an assessment to be conducted.”A delayed discharge is when doctors have deemed a patient well enough to leave but they have to wait for outside assistance – such as social care or a place in a care home – to be put in place.The Lib Dems asked all 14 Scottish health boards for data on the matter for 2020/21.NHS Dumfries and Galloway had the highest average delay of the 12 health boards that responded, with patients spending on average 34.5 days in hospital after being given approval to leave.A total of 111 patients in the region spent more than three weeks in hospital unnecessarily.And in one case, a patient was kept in for a staggering 617 days after being given the all-clear to go home.A spokesman for the region’s health board said it had one of the lowest rates of delayed discharges as a share of population in the country.He said: “One of the key challenges impacting on the ability to discharge people