BED-BLOCKING has cost Scotland’s health service £440 million since Nicola Sturgeon became first minister, it has been revealed.

The spiralling cost comes despite her former health secretary Shona Robison insisting she was determined to “eradicate” the problem in 2015.

Scottish Labour’s shadow health secretary Anas Sarwar said the SNP’s broken promise was putting an “intolerable strain on NHS wards”.

Figures highlighted by the party show 43,244 bed days were lost last month – an increase of almost 10 per cent on the same time last year – with 205,871 lost so far in 2018.

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Between December 2014 and May this year, 1,887,381 were lost to delayed discharge. Using official figures of £233 per bed day, this amounts to a total cost to the NHS of just under £440m.

Bed-blocking, or delayed discharge, sees mainly elderly patients stuck in hospital despite being well enough to leave, often due to a lack of social care provision in the community.

Mr Sarwar said hundreds of patients each month are “languishing unnecessarily in hospital beds”.

He said: “Much of the delay in discharging patients is due to social care issues and delays in care assessments – the result of the SNP government’s £1.5 billion cut to council budgets.

“Labour would end the cuts to our councils and deliver a national guarantee for care workers, ensuring all care workers are given appropriate training, paid the living wage, including the time and cost for travel.

“As the NHS approaches its 70th birthday it is only Labour – the party that founded the health service – that has a sustainable plan for its future.”

It comes as it emerged Scotland’s monthly interim A&E waiting time target has been missed for the ninth consecutive month.

The SNP has an interim target that 95 per cent of patients will be admitted, transferred of discharged within four hours of arriving at A&E. But the latest figures show just 93 per cent were seen within this time.

Weekly figures published by ISD Scotland – the NHS’s data division – show 142 patients waited over eight hours and 26 patients waited over 12 hours.

Meanwhile, almost 500 planned operations were cancelled last month due to capacity restraints or “non-clinical” reasons.

Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Miles Briggs called on the SNP to “get a grip” of Scotland’s health service.

He said: “Despite all the promises of the SNP to eradicate delayed discharge these figures show that the number of patients languishing in inappropriate care settings is significantly worse.

“The SNP has used winter and flu as excuses for everything from increasingly cancelled operations to lengthening mental health waiting times.

“There is simply no excuse for these latest worsening figures other than the mismanagement of the SNP.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said bed blocking was the cause of many cancelled operations.

He said: “It’s cruel to leave people trapped in hospital when they are healthy enough to go home.

“Across the country people have been left waiting up to 600 nights because care services aren’t sufficient for them to return to.

"That can have a disastrous effect on their physical and mental health.”

Health Secretary Jeane Freeman said there had been a seven per cent drop in bed days lost to delayed discharge during 2017/18.

She said: “To support this progress there will be almost £500 million of NHS frontline investment in social care and integration.

“We expect local integrated health and social care partnerships to make long-term, sustainable progress to ensure more people are able to leave hospital as soon as appropriate following their treatment.”