New studies have shown that a total of 29,374 beds were blocked in hospitals in the UK last year. A high proportion of these were due to a lack of capacity in nursing homes or residential care homes. Unfortunately bed-blocking comes at a great cost with results from the requests showing prices ranging between £200-£727.
Experts within the field have said that an answer to this issue would be home care, enabling the person to live independently at home whilst receiving the care they need. However, freedom of information requests have shown that there were over 3,000 bed-blocking incidents recorded due to the wait for care packages at home.
The long awaited social care green paper will hopefully address how this issue will be tackled going forwards.
