Elderly woman occupied an NHS bed for 6 MONTHS
- Iris Sibley had been taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary last June after having a fall
- Health officials had assessed her as being well enough to leave shortly after
- However, they advised doctors that she was in need of round-the-clock care
- It took until January 4 until they were able to find her a suitable nursing home
Stephen Matthews For Mailonline
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An NHS Trust has apologised after an elderly woman remained on a ward for six months at a cost of more than £80,000 despite being fit for discharge.
Iris Sibley, 89, had been taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary last June after she suffered a fall at her care home.
Health officials assessed her as being well enough to leave shortly after, but advised that she needed round-the-clock care.
And it wasn’t until January 4 that they were able to find her a suitable nursing home, leaving her ‘distressed and let down’ after spending so long in isolation.
Iris Sibley, 89, had been taken to Bristol Royal Infirmary last June after she had suffered a fall at her care home
Her son, John, told the Guardian her ordeal was ‘pretty scandalous’ and had put a ‘huge strain’ on their family.
‘It’s not until you get caught up in it that you realise how serious the situation is,’ he told the newspaper.
Robert Woolley, chief executive of University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said a formal investigation was under way.
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‘I’m very sorry for what happened to Mrs Sibley and apologise to her family for the massive frustration that all of us have caused,’ he told The Guardian.
Mr Woolley said there is a ‘critical interdependency’ between social care and the NHS.
‘If we get the capacity wrong in social care, it’s the NHS that bears the consequences. That is plain for all to see,’ he said.
The Department of Health said it had increased funding and published guidelines designed to improve co-ordination between the NHS and relevant bodies.
Mrs Sibley’s case follows revelations that patients have faced discharge delays of more than year in Scotland.
One patient in Dumfries and Galloway was kept in hospital for 508 days despite being well enough to be discharged, figures obtained by the Scottish Liberal Democrats showed.
HOSPITALS ARE FULL
NHS hospitals serving millions of people are completely full, with no beds for new patients, shocking official figures revealed last month.
In the weeks running up to Christmas, more than a dozen hospitals across England faced turning away critically ill patients because they were running at 100 per cent capacity.
Experts say anything over 85 per cent occupancy is dangerous.
One hospital, the Princess Alexandra in Harlow, Essex, did not have a single bed free in any general or acute care ward for 27 days in December.
This case comes after a man who was evicted from a hospital after he ‘repeatedly refused to leave’ for two years claimed he was ‘forced to stay’.
Portuguese-born Adriano Guedes, 63, was admitted to the James Paget University Hospital in Norfolk following a stroke in August 2014.
But he was removed after the hospital, which said he occupied a bed ‘unnecessarily’, obtained a court order on January 10 this year.
However, the pair came to a stalemate after Mr Guedes’ fare of events differs to that of the hospital’s.
In fact, he said he asked to leave to be moved on multiple occasions, both to a ‘wheelchair-friendly place’ and a specialist clinic in London.
But the hospital in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth, said he was offered appropriate accommodation.
This comes after figures in December revealed bedblocking is costing the NHS half a billion pounds each year.
The rate at which patients are becoming trapped in hospital because of a lack of care at home has more than doubled since 2010.
In 2015/16, bedblocking patients who were well enough to be discharged spent a total of 1,489,575 days in hospital.
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