Hospitals can avoid delays in discharge by making a single health or social care practitioner responsible for discharging patients, NICE says.
The recommendation comes from NICE’s latest social care guideline which aims to improve the transition between inpatient hospital settings and community or care settings for adults with social care needs.
Delays in the discharge of patients place a huge burden on the NHS. Figures from NHS England show that more than a million hospital days were lost due to delayed discharges over the past year. In September, 5,247 patients were delayed from being discharged, which is the highest figure so far in 2015.
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