GETTING patients out of hospital and back home is the key to putting Worcestershire’s hospitals back on track, a health boss has said.

New figures have shown 3,359 ‘bed days’ were lost at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Kidderminster Hospital and Redditch's Alexandra Hospital in May as a result of patients who no longer needed treatment unable to leave as a result of a lack of community placements or transport to take them home – an increase of more than 1,300 on the same period last year.

Speaking at a meeting of board of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the three sites, interim chief operating officer Rab McEwan said talking the problem – known commonly as ‘bed blocking’ – was the key to solving the myriad of other issues faced by the organisation.

“Something has happened over the last six months that means there are more patients who are fit to go home than there have ever been,” he said.

“There is evidence patients are staying in hospital longer then they need to.

“We can do better on delayed transfers of care, especially those who are transferred out of the county.

“We are in the process of implementing some measures to break the cycle.”

Saying the average length each patient stayed in hospital had increased by half a day over the past year, Mr McEwan said plans being put in place included setting up a new discharge lounge at the Royal where patients ready to leave hospital could wait, freeing up beds for others who needed them.

“We need to have more space for patients who are fit to go home and don’t need to be in a ward,” he said.

“We need to create a much better discharge facility where they can be comfortable and get home as early as possible.”

One of the key targets the trust has routinely failed to achieve over the past year is the NHS requirement to see, treat and either discharge or admit at last 95 per cent of A&E patients within four hours. In May more than 14 per cent – about 1,900 in total – waited longer than four hours.

Although this shows a slight improvement over the past few months and is best figure since November last year, it is still far off the NHS-mandated 95 per cent target. But Mr McEwan vowed to ensure the target was being reached by October.

The trust also failed to achieve the NHS target of ensuring at last 96 per cent of cancer patients have their first treatment within 31 days for the first time since last July. But the target was only missed by a very small proportion and was achieved in 95.33 per cent of cases.

Mr McEwan said he was optimistic that the figures could be improved. He said: “With a bit more grip and bit more focus will see some improvement in these figures quite rapidly.”