Community Health Councils (CHCs) in Wales are concerned at the number of people affected by delays in leaving hospital because they are waiting for arrangements to be made to go home or on to the next stage of their care.

CHCs are an independent watch-dog of NHS services within Wales. They encourage and enable members of the public to be actively involved in decisions affecting the design, development and delivery of healthcare for their families and local communities.

In a report published this week ‘Time to go home?’, people describe how a delay in leaving hospital has affected them or those who care for or about them.

John Pearce, Chair of the Board of Community Health Councils in Wales, said: “We often hear about the large numbers of ‘delayed transfers of care’ or ‘bed blocking’.

“These are not complimentary terms to describe people who simply want to go home.

“What it means is that people have difficulty in getting the right care and community care services when they are medically fit to leave hospital and this is through no fault of their own.

“This in turn means that there can be cancelled operations or long stays in emergency care departments for others when they are waiting for a bed to become available.

“For people stuck in hospital waiting to go home, we heard about the loneliness, isolation and depression they may feel. Some people told us they felt they were losing control of their lives. Others told us about a loss of confidence and independence that had affected peoples’ lives forever.

“People told us that better communication, understanding and involvement between NHS staff and families could help resolve many of the problems, frustrations and anxieties they felt,” continued Mr. Pearce.

“The number of stories in our report represent only a small number of the delays regularly reported by the NHS in Wales. Some of the reasons for these delays have been problems for a long time in Wales and across the UK.

“Over the past year health boards have increasingly identified a lack of suitable care home places and community care support as the main reason people are staying in hospital longer than they need to.

“The Welsh Government needs to make sure health and care bodies are able to invest the time and money to work together to agree how to tackle these issues as quickly as possible so that people’s lives are not changed for the worse because the system isn’t working as well as it should,” he added.