HEALTH and social care bosses have vowed to work together to tackle bed blocking in Oxfordshire in order to free up hospital beds before next winter.

The news comes as NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens announced plans last week to reduce long-term hospital stays across the country by 25 per cent.

Last winter hundreds of operations were postponed to improve bed availability as the county's acute hospitals struggled to cope with the added pressure.

Bed blocking - caused when patients cannot be discharged from hospital because of a lack of alternative care - has been a particular problem in Oxfordshire's acute hospitals for many years and is seen as a priority for health chiefs.

Following the announcement, however, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford County Council and Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, have all said that a raft of measures have been introduced to improve the situation, including more social care staff, an increase in spending on home care and weekly patient assessments on hospital wards.

Latest figures show there were 74 acute hospital beds currently affected by bed blocking (also known as Delayed Transfer of Care) as of April 2018, with 26 of these in some part the result a lack of social care availability.

The figure is a reduction from the110 cases of bed blocking in April 2017 - 55 of these were down to inadequate social care arrangements.

Oxford Mail:

OUH chief nurse Sam Foster

Chief nurse at OUH, Sam Foster, said this year the trust had ‘significantly’ reduced the number of patients who have spent over seven days in Oxford University Hospital beds from 156 on March 12 to just 80 by May 21 2018.

Director of Adult Services at Oxfordshire County Council, Kate Terroni, added that bed blocking cases were now at the lowest level for many years.

Ms Terroni said the council had bought 'more home care than ever before' and has reviewed how social workers work across the hospital system.

She added: “Those clinically able to be discharged now have greatly improved access to care, enabling them to be independent at home and to leave hospital as soon as appropriate care packages are in place."

NHS England said cracking down on bed blocking would also benefit patient care with research showing that a stay of more than 10 days in hospital leads to 10 years’ muscle ageing for elderly patients.