Nineteen mental health patients waited two years for hospital discharge in Scotland

A senior NHS official has admitted some mental health patients can face “very, very long delays” before leaving hospital after it emerged 19 individuals have been waiting more than two years to be discharged.

Professor Jason Leitch, the national clinical director of healthcare quality and strategy, made the comments in the wake of a BBC investigation into the problem.

It found that across the UK, at least 91 mental health patients have waited more than a year to be discharged, while in Scotland 19 have been waiting more than two years.

Details revealed under freedom of information rules show NHS Lothian had the longest wait, recorded at 1,200 days, while NHS Tayside listed one delay of 1,196 days, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde had one of 1,193.

The Tayside and Glasgow patients had complex needs and were awaiting transfer to specialist facilities, while no information was provided on the reasons for the delay in Lothian, according to the report.

Opposition politicians branded the waits a “national disgrace”, with Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all demanding action from the Scottish Government.

Scottish Conservative mental health spokeswoman Annie Wells said: ” The SNP has promised for years to tackle delayed discharge, but the figures show no sign of improvement.

” Examples here show the extreme cases where vulnerable people are fit to leave hospital but have nowhere to go, sometimes for years on end. It’s unacceptable and has to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

Labour inequalities spokeswoman Monica Lennon said: ” These figures should jolt the SNP Government in Edinburgh into action and finally give mental health the parity of esteem with physical health that it needs.

“In 2015, SNP Health Secretary Shona Robison promised to eradicate delayed discharge out of our system completely – instead we are seeing vulnerable people wait years to leave hospital.

“We need to see a key change of approach from the SNP Government on two levels – first a commitment to ensure that considerations towards mental health runs through all Government policy, and abandoning the failed policy of passing on Tory austerity to Scottish public services.”

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Alex Cole-Hamilton said: ” Despite nearly a decade in social care I have never encountered before such a dereliction of care for the needs and interests for patients in need of help. This is a national disgrace and a severe violation of human rights.

“These figures represent the dire consequences of historic under-funding of mental health with no evidence to show that situation is going to change anytime soon. This situation is only going to get worse without a substantial increase in investment.”

Prof Leitch stressed those enduring lengthy delays were ” exceptional cases” affecting “very, very small numbers” of patients who faced “very, very long delays” to be discharged.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, he said: “These cases are usually enormously complex, sometimes incredibly sad actually.

“These are not the conventional delayed discharges where the system just needs to speak to each other a bit better and we’ll get people out in three or four weeks if we just work a little harder.”

While he said such patients were fit to leave acute hospitals, the NHS still has “to be very careful with these individuals, their complexity means they could be a risk to themselves, to others or society”.

Although the Health Secretary has pledged to end the problem of bed blocking, Prof Leitch said: “I don’t think for that target, for that aim, for that aspiration, we should concentrate on these mental health patients.

“We do eventually find solutions for these individuals, we have men and women inside our mental health communities who are very complex and require new-build housing with 24-hour carers. That’s not something you can do a week on Tuesday, that’s something that requires planning permission, it may be that you have to adjust their house in such a way that a new house is required.

“Those individuals are being dealt with all the time by our health and social care system and they will eventually find a better location for them.”

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