MORE than 16,000 NHS patients were stuck in hospital wards in Scotland when they were well enough to leave last year, an investigation has revealed.

The scale of the struggle which hospitals face discharging patients in a timely fashion has been exposed by the new figures, which are not routinely published by the health service.

Excluding complex cases, health boards logged 16,712 occasions when patients were delayed in hospital for more than three days after they were ready to return to the community.

More than 6,500 of these people were held-up in hospital for more than a fortnight and nearly 2000 (1961) were confined to wards in excess of six weeks.

Many of the patients were waiting for social care arrangements to be put in place to support them to live independently.

However, the research conducted by The Herald using Freedom of Information legislation, shows 623 patients could not be discharged because their council did not have the funding available to pay for their care home place.

Theresa Fyffe, director of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said the figures reinforced the urgency of tackling delayed discharges. She continued: "It is simply not fair for almost 2,000 people to be kept in hospital unnecessarily for over six weeks, as they were last year. Not only that, it goes against the grain of what the NHS is trying to provide: good quality, person-centred care at home or in a homely setting."

NHS officials regularly publish delayed discharge figures based on snapshot surveys which are conducted four times a year. These present a picture of the number of people backed-up on wards on census days. Between April 2013 and 2014 each census showed between 564 and 776 patients waiting to go home.

As part of The Herald's NHS: Time for Action campaign, The Herald asked health boards for the total number of delayed discharges recorded in the 2013-14 financial year. The campaign is calling for a review of capacity in health and social care to ensure the right resources are in the right place to look after the growing elderly population.

According to the responses from health boards there were 1290 delays of more than three days, excluding complex cases, in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde alone. Of these 964 were awaiting completion of social care assessments and 55 were stuck because council money to pay for a care home place was not available.

In the Lothian's 5428 patients suffered a delayed discharge, with 1682 held-up because care arrangements to allow them to live in their own homes were not complete.

For Fife the total figure was 1378, and 185 were affected by care home funding issues, while in Grampian 1958 patients were delayed and 474 were waiting for home care to be sorted.

In some health boards lack of money for a care home home place did not appear to be an issue at all, such as Lothian and Grampian. In Tayside 199 patients were affected by this problem, in Lanarkshire 136.

Cllr Peter Johnston, health and well-being spokesman for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, said: "It's true that delayed discharge continues to be a challenge for local partnerships - but looking at the data, only 3.7 per cent of people delayed were delayed for reasons of funding. While that's 3.7 per cent more than we would have liked, it does put our performance in a wider perspective.

"Councils' commitment to this agenda is evidenced by their willingness to invest significant resources at a time of considerable financial pressure."

He added that how to build social care capacity to make the system work better will require heavy investment over the next few years.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Although delayed discharge has been reduced by two thirds under this Government, there is still more to do.

"Whilst there are a number of reasons for delay in discharge, health and social care integration is a key priority for this Government and NHS boards are working closely with local authorities to reduce the number of people waiting in hospital for appropriate care services to be arranged in the community. A taskforce has been set up with Cosla to make this happen and a further 200 intermediate care beds in communities are to be created across the country as we develop new models of care built around treating more people in their own communities."

But Ms Fyffe said questions still remain about how ever-growing patient demand would be met in future, adding: "What we now need is a review of all of our NHS and the Government to commit to put in place sufficient resources to make the system sustainable."