Jersey General Hospital delayed discharges (FOI)

Request 

The number of people stuck in Jersey General Hospital, despite being medically fit to leave, due to delayed discharges (also known as 'bed blocking'). 

Please can I have figures for each month from December 2021 to July 2022. 

Please tell me the reasons for their delayed transfer and be as specific as possible. E.g., Awaiting care home placement - 10 patients.

Response

In the Health and Community Services (HCS) Patient Administration System, inpatients are considered 'delayed' at the point they are marked as Medically Fit For Discharge (MFFD). This is the point where the lead clinician considers there is no clinical reason for a patient to occupy an acute inpatient bed.

From mid-July 2022, changes were made to the system to allow users to record whether a patient is also 'Therapy Fit' and 'Socially Fit' as well as MFFD. At this time, the available options users could select to describe the reason for delay were changed. For this reason, the attached data has been split into two separate tables for the time periods pre and post this change.

A patient is 'Therapy Fit' when they have been assessed by the appropriate Therapist(s) and, if required, a care plan is in place.

A patient is 'Socially Fit' when they have been assessed by a Social Worker and, if required, a care plan is in place.

Please see attached tables. Please refer to the key below for acronyms and definitions.

 Tables (pdf) 

Table key

EMI = Elderly Mentally Infirm

NWB = Non-weight bearing

Other reason = Any reason for delay in discharge that does not fit into another defined category

Where numbers are small, disclosure control has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals and numbers fewer than five are represented as '<5'. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Article applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.