- They say patients should only be allowed to go if they consent themselves
- Figures show as many as 400 patients are being discharged every night
- Change-seekers include the chairman of public administration committee
- A report highlighted a woman in her 80s who was sent to an empty house
Sophie Borland Health Editor And Ben Wilkinson For The Daily Mail
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Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the committee, said hospital staff seem to feel pressured to discharge patients before it is safe to do so
Hospitals must end the ‘incredibly dangerous’ practice of discharging patients overnight, MPs have warned.
They have urged Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to ensure patients are sent home between 11pm and 6am only if they are happy to leave.
While there is no official data, some figures show the numbers discharged overnight could be as high as 400 a night.
MPs on the public administration and constitutional affairs committee also say hospitals are ‘hurrying’ patients home long before they are ready to free up beds. Some even send ‘discharge teams’ to wards to hunt out patients who they think are fit enough to leave.
The committee says the numbers of unsafe and overnight discharges will only rise as hospitals become more overstretched.
They were prompted to investigate the crisis by a damning Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report earlier this year.
It had highlighted nine harrowing cases of unsafe discharges – including a 93-year-old who died in her granddaughter’s arms hours after being sent home. And it warned that complaints about patients sent home inappropriately had soared by a third in a year – with 211 in 2014/15.
Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, chairman of the committee, said: ‘Hospital staff seem to feel pressured to discharge patients before it is safe to do so.
‘Night discharges are potentially dangerous for patients, and detrimental to their carers and relatives,’ the report added.
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‘Whilst we are aware than an outright ban on night discharges might have unintended consequences, the Secretary of State for Health must set out how he intends to ensure that only those who want to be are discharged between 11pm and 6am.
‘The incidence of unsafe discharge from NHS hospitals is much too high and this is unacceptable.
‘Spending constraints and demand pressures can only make matters worse, but these in themselves are not an excuse for poor practice or failure to communicate, leading to unacceptable risk to patients.’
MY 74-YEAR-OLD MOTHER COULD HAVE FROZEN TO DEATH
Elsie Allanson (pictured with daughter June Spencer) was wearing just a dressing gown and slippers when she was discharged from hospital at 2am in freezing temperatures
Elsie Allanson was wearing just a dressing gown and slippers when she was discharged from hospital at 2am in freezing temperatures.
The great-grandmother, then 74, had been admitted after suffering a mini-stroke and her family turned off her home’s heating, believing she would be in hospital for weeks.
But staff at St James’s Hospital in Leeds decided she was ‘clinically fit’ and discharged her that night.
Mrs Allanson’s daughter June Spencer said her mother had been so frail that her taxi driver almost had to carry her to her front door.
Mrs Spencer, who lives in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, said: ‘If it hadn’t been for a competent taxi driver she could have been dead in the garden. She couldn’t even get out of the taxi.’
Her mother had to be re-admitted to hospital two days later with a chest infection. Mrs Allanson told the BBC at the time: ‘I feel a bit angry at being sent out in all that snow because if I had known they were going to do that I wouldn’t have gone in the first place.’
Mrs Spencer sent a formal letter of complaint to the hospital after the incident in 2010. Her mother died two years later.
Other patients have also been discharged late into the night because their bed was needed.
One man was sent home in his nightclothes and had to pay a £40 taxi fare at 4.30am after doctors at a hospital on the Isle of Wight decided he was fit enough to leave.
The committee said it had taken evidence about the scale of unsafe discharges from the Alzheimer’s Society, which described them as ‘incredibly dangerous’. It urged the Department of Health to collate proper figures.
Janet Morrison, chief executive of charity Independent Age, said: ‘This report paints a damning picture of the management of hospital discharge across many parts of the NHS. The worrying “revolving-door” approach means people are being rushed out of hospital too soon as the race to find beds takes priority over patients’ needs.
Jeremy Hunt is being urged to ensure patients are sent home between 11pm and 6am only if they are happy to leave
‘Sadly, frail patients who weren’t even ready to leave only find they end up back in hospital again.’ And the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Julie Mellor said: ‘We see too many cases where discharge from hospital has gone horribly wrong – particularly for older, frail people who often don’t have the right support in place at home to cope on their own.
‘These shocking failures will continue to happen unless the Government tackles the heart of the problem – the chronic underfunding of social care which is piling excruciating pressure on the NHS, leaving vulnerable patients without a lifeline.’
Her report in May also highlighted the case of a woman in her 80s who was discharged from hospital to an empty house. She still had a catheter in place as staff had forgotten to remove it.
And one 85-year-old woman with dementia was sent home alone at 11pm – as hospital staff failed to inform her family.
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