Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
22
Accepted
NHS England's current discharge speed-up processes show inconsistent results across the country.
Conclusion
NHS England told us it had instructed the NHS to speed up discharge processes, for example by minimising waits for supporting services such as transport and medications. It was also asking hospitals to monitor patients more closely to assess whether they needed to remain in hospital. We asked whether this approach was working.59 NHS England told us that there were some good examples across the country but accepted that there was more to be done, particularly in terms of reducing variations between different places, and ensuring that patients are discharged from hospital to the right place and at the right time.60 55 Committee of Public Accounts, Discharging older people from acute hospitals, Twelfth Report of Session 2016–17, HC 76, 22 July 2016, page 5, paragraph 3 56 Qq 57, 105; AUEC0001, AUEC0003, AUEC0005, 57 Qq 105, 128 58 Q 57 59 Qq 38, 41 60 Qq 2, 38, 42 14 Access to urgent and emergency care 3 NHS workforce
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the committee's finding, stating the recommendation has been implemented through an additional £1.6 billion investment and a comprehensive Urgent and Emergency Care recovery plan to tackle delayed discharges, improve processes, and increase social care capacity.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 The Department of Health and Social Care is investing an additional £1.6 billion over 2023-24 and 2024-25, on top of the extra £500 million invested in 2022-23, to enable the NHS and local authorities to commission a greater range of services for people who need short-term packages of care and support for rehabilitation, reablement and recovery and to prevent avoidable delays to hospital discharge. 4.3 The Urgent and Emergency Care recovery plan, published in January 2023, sets out a wide programme of measures to tackle delayed discharges from hospital and community settings and improve outcomes for patients. In addition to increased discharge funding, this includes action to improve discharge processes; introduce care transfer hubs in all areas of the country to streamline and improve management of discharges for patients with more complex health and/or social care needs; improve models of rehabilitation and reablement; increase adult social care capacity; provide a more integrated approach to supporting improvements in discharge across health and social care; and improve the use of data and metrics to drive improvements in discharge.