Dementia patients and care transfers (FOI)Dementia patients and care transfers (FOI)
Produced by the Freedom of Information officeAuthored by Government of Jersey and published on
29 October 2024.Prepared internally, no external costs.
Request
Jersey's Director of Mental Health and Adult Social Care, - Andy Weir recently said in the last Health Board meeting that "one dementia patient has been living on an inpatient ward for 20 months as there was an issue with finding them somewhere to go due to their complex needs" and that “17 out of 40 of beds in December 2023, were occupied by people who didn't need to be in hospital but couldn't go out”.
In relation to this would it be possible to find out how many dementia patients have spent more than a month on a ward because they weren't able to get a care transfer- within the last three years
If this could be broken down by year and how long they were on the ward - that would be great.
However, if this request exceeds the amount of time that can be spent then please could you focus on 2023 solely?
Response
Records are not held in a format which allows reporting of delayed transfers of care (DTOC) exceeding one month against patient-specific diagnoses from central records.
Identifying the requested information would require significant interrogation and reconciliation of multiple datasets. A Scheduled Public Authority is not obliged to create or manipulate data for the purposes of responding to Freedom of Information requests. Furthermore, the resource required to perform such analysis and reconciliation exceeds that prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.
DTOC data showing dementia as a reason for delay, from March 2023 to February 2024 for Mental Health Services, and from September 2023 through to March 2024 for Jersey General Hospital, are available in the March 2024 HCS Advisory Board papers:
HCS Advisory Board - Papers - Part A - March 2024.pdf
Article applied
Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive
(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.
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