A BEDBLOCKING crisis in the county has forced health bosses to launch a week-long blitz.

An average of 141 beds a day were out of action over the 2014/15 financial year as they were taken up by patients who did not require hospital treatment.

Oxfordshire has remained one of the worst areas in England for bedblocking, rated bottom in January and second worst in March.

County council deputy chairwoman of the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Susanna Pressel, said: “We know that the NHS is in crisis throughout the country. But no-one has been able to explain why Oxfordshire is so very much worse than almost everywhere else, with no sign of improvement.”

Bedblocking tends to be caused by delays in organising community care, further assessments, spaces in nursing homes and beds in community hospitals.

According to the county council, the number of bedblocking cases, known as “delayed transfers of care”, in 2014/15 was 21 per cent higher than the previous year.

In January this year Oxfordshire health services were handed £520,000 to deliver a “rapid” improvement on bedblocking cases, using it to speed up getting patients out of hospital.

According to a report from OUHT, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Oxfordshire County Council, this has helped reduce the number of bedblockers by 33 per cent since January.

But by the end of March, there were still 117 people needlessly in hospital beds.

Yesterday hospitals, ambulances and community health services began seven days of action to find a way to tackle the problem.

The week, called Breaking The Cycle, will see more care staff and patient transport services and earlier operation times.

South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) will run two extra patient transport services to help reduce the strain on ambulances over the seven days.

A patient transport service will take some patients who either can’t drive or who are infirm to emergency GP appointments for an assessment to see if they need to be taken to hospital.

Operations director Steve West said: “This should allow patients to be seen and treated on the day without requiring a hospital stay.”

OUHT will also be looking at performing scheduled operations earlier in the day, to reduce the amount of time patients spend on the ward.

The trust’s director of clinical services Paul Brennan said: “At the hospitals we will increase the amount of time that social care clinicians spend on the wards.

“This exercise is about learning and how all services can improve the flow of patients and patient services,” added Mr West.

During the week of action, nonurgent meetings will be cancelled, patients will be transferred to community hospitals – operated by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust – earlier, and staff will be advised to keep administration and emails to a minimum.

But there were concerns that such a short-term initiative to find ways of solving the problem would not be sustainable.

The council’s Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee member Laura Price said: “The fact that all the agencies are putting their own [resources] in this is a good thing.

“My main concern is that we complete this exercise and find we need more community patient beds, more transport and more care workers.

“Then we need to know that’s going to be sustainable.

“It will]be an issue if we know the solution but don’t have the resources,” added Ms Price.

OUHT, which runs Oxford’s John Radcliffe andChurchill hospitals and Banbury’s Horton General Hospital, plus Oxford’s Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, has said that bedblocking has contributed to the trust failing to meet A&E waiting time targets.

Chief executive of Healthwatch Oxfordshire, Rachel Coney, said: “We remain very concerned about the persistent failure of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (OUHT) to meet the basic pledges made to the public in the NHS Constitution.

“We will be looking for evidence that they have good strong plans in place to meet the A&E and other major targets.”

Mr Brennan added: “We are seeing a lot more elderly people, some in their 90s and 100s, who are more acute than other patients and require more care.

“Part of the problem is the flow of patients through the system.”