Hospital patients waiting 'up to 15 hours' to be discharged due to medication availability, says councillor

Health scrutiny committee chairman Derek White said the availability of prescriptions was “one of the biggest causes of delays” to people leaving hospital.

Telford and Wrekin Council prevention and enablement chief Michael Bennett said the authority tracked “adverse discharges” and reported them to NHS commissioners and main hospital trust.

He added that the borough’s Healthwatch group was carrying out a survey into this and other problems encountered by patients leaving hospital, including the availability of transport and a suitable home to go to.

Speaking after Mr Bennett’s presentation on “prevention and enablement”, which included the topic of supporting hospital discharges, Councillor Jacqui Seymour said she had recently read a national Healthwatch report.

“There were some very disturbing elements in it, such as people being discharged late at night, without their medicines and also not necessarily to a safe home, or not knowing if there’s anyone there to look after them,” she said.

“Can we be sure that this is not happening anywhere within the SaTH [Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust] area?”

Councillor White said the availability of medication was a major roadblock.

“We’ve seen patients sitting there on their beds for up to 15 hours and not getting discharged, and mainly because the doctor or the nurses can’t get hold of the prescription or the prescription can’t be filled,” he said.

Problem

“One of the biggest causes of delays was getting the medication to people before they’re allowed out.

“The amount of people sit there, saying ‘For God’s sake, just let us go, I’ll get it from the local chemist’, but you can’t get it from the local chemist.

“It really is a problem, and certainly it ties in with the question Jacqui was asking.”

Mr Bennett said the problem Councillor Seymour described was not common, but “does happen on occasion”.

He said those issues were reported to the borough’s NHS clinical commissioning group and Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin were also carrying out research.

He said: “We’re seeking as much as we can to ensure all the things are set up in the way that they need to be – the medication is sorted, the time of transport is confirmed to the provider who will then greet.

“While that, generally, is working well, we know that there are problems and we see where the problems are.”

In his presentation he said the need to clean ambulances between patients, where contact with Covid-19 was suspected, pushed transportation times later and later into the evening.