MORE should be done to tackle delays discharging patients from hospital, according to MSPs.
An investigation by The Herald has revealed the number of patients stuck on wards when they were well enough to leave reached 16,700 last year.
Opposition politicians called for action on the back of the figures, which exclude complex cases and people delayed for less than three days.
Jim Hume, health spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "What these figures suggest is that our NHS is still not getting the support it needs from ministers to tackle this problem.
"Unless the way we support social care changes we are likely to see more and more patients, through no fault of their own, sitting in bed spaces that could and should be used more effectively."
Jenny Marra, health spokeswoman for Scottish Labour, said the problem was the biggest issue facing the NHS today and took a toll on the patients, their families and the public purse.
Ms Marra continued: "The SNP government have to make this a priority to get things moving and solve this huge problem in our NHS."
Official NHS figures on delayed discharge are based on surveys which are carried out four times a year. As part of the Herald's campaign NHS: Time for Action, the newspaper asked for the total number of delayed discharges recorded in the financial year 2013-14. This revealed 16,712 cases. It also showed more than 6,500 of the patients were held-up in hospital for more than a fortnight and nearly 2000 (1961) were confined to wards in excess of six weeks.
The NHS: Time for Action campaign is calling for a review of capacity in health and social care to ensure the right resources are in the right place to cope with the growing elderly population.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said tackling delayed discharge was a top priority and £18m had been invested in dealing with the problem in recent months. She continued: "That means we must ensure effective co-ordination between the NHS and social care services so that these, often very frail, patients can either get home or into a homely setting as quickly as is possible.
"To help deliver this we've already legislated for the integration of health and social care from this April.
"We're working in partnership with health boards and local authorities to achieve integration, and council leaders have recently agreed to focus on discharge within 72 hours of people being judged clinically ready to go home."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article