An average of more than 200 people a day were stuck in Oxfordshire hospital beds as the county’s bedblocking crisis hit a new low.

The figures come as the Oxford Mail can reveal for the first time the bottlenecks in the system which are adding to the county’s chronic bed blocking problem.

In September, Oxfordshire was the worst place in England for bed blocking.

And figures published yesterday for October once again leave the county languishing at the bottom of a list of 202 local authorities, with patients spending 6,335 days in local hospitals when they should have moved on to the next stage of recovery or care.

This equates to an average of 205 patients each day being delayed.

But Anita Higham, vice-chairman of Oxfordshire Link health watchdog, believed the health and social services authorities were trying to improve the situation and called on families to take more responsibility for their elderly and those in need of home care.

Bedblocking – officially known as Delayed Transfers of Care – is the responsibility of a number of authorities, including NHS Oxfordshire, the county council, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and Oxford Health, which runs community hospitals.

Figures reveal the bulk of the delays, 2,231, were waiting further NHS non acute care, which means non emergency care, mainly in a community hospital.

A further 1,282 delays were because a care package had not yet been set up in a person’s own home so they could return.

In July, Dr Stephen Richards, the head of the Oxfordshire GP Consortium, called together health and council bosses and set up the Acceptable Care for Everyone (ACE) board to simplify the flow of patients through the care system.

Last night Dr Richards was unavailable for comment.

But a statement sent on behalf of all agencies involved said: “The complicated issue of delayed transfers of care is a top priority for all organisations involved; however, as we have said before, it not something that can be solved overnight.

“It will take time for the new programme of work aimed at tackling delays to show results.

“As part of this programme, the NHS and Oxfordshire County Council are working together to develop new ways of reducing the number of delays in Oxfordshire.

“This includes investing over £6m to help get people home in a timely manner with support to get them back on to their feet quickly; long-term support for people to enable them to stay at home rather than being admitted to hospital and more funding for people who need a stay in a care home when discharged from hospital.”

Ms Higham said the ‘Big Society’ needed to play its part in solving the issue.

She said: “Undoubtedly there will be examples on all sides of incompetence and inefficiency, but I believe the authorities are, largely, doing the best they can with the resources they have got.

“People and their families have to accept a degree of the responsibility too.

“It’s no good families thinking ‘Oh we can’t have Joe Bloggs back here, how would we possibly cope?’ “We can’t go around being dependent on someone else to sort out all of our problems.”