Delayed patient discharges in the NHS now cost £2.7 billion, a 7.5 per cent rise in a year, figures show.
King’s Fund charity analysis indicates one in ten hospital beds are occupied by medically fit patients. These delays stem from difficulties arranging social care at home and issues with care home spaces and funding.
This creates severe bed shortages, forcing other patients into “corridor care” while awaiting admission.
Last year, nearly 13,000 daily delayed discharges occurred, up 300 on the 2024-25 average. The King’s Fund also noted a bed day now costs £562, up from £536 last year.
As a result, delayed discharges are costing the NHS £2.7 billion a year, it said.
Danielle Jefferies, senior analyst at the King’s Fund, said: “The rising costs of delayed discharges will put even more pressure on already stretched NHS budgets alongside contributing to longer waits in A&E and more harrowing cases of corridor care.
“Patients are being left stranded in hospital beds, frustrated at being unable to leave despite being well enough to do so, knowing that sicker patients need their bed with little they can do about it.
“A range of issues cause this backlog, including stretched adult social care and NHS community services, to administrative quagmires, all which trickles down into A&E waiting rooms and the consequences are felt acutely by patients.
“Solving these issues will, of course, be key to reaching the Government’s goal of ending corridor care by 2029 and reducing the financial and human burden of delayed discharge but it is not just within hospitals and the care system that Government should be looking to for solutions.
“Ultimately, these problems can only be addressed sustainably by reducing incoming demand on hospitals.
“That means the Government must be much bolder in tackling wider issues like obesity or moving care out of hospitals by effectively implementing greater community care.”
It comes as the public are to be asked who should get social care, what people should pay and what role the state should play to inform a major review into the current “patched together” system.
Baroness Louise Casey, who is leading a commission into adult social care in England, has said the system too often creates “agony and uncertainty” for people at the most vulnerable points in their lives.
