Ensuring smooth transition of frail elderly patients from hospital to community

Concerns about aspects of the NHS were raised in October by NHS Providers (2019) in a report entitled The State of the NHS Provider Sector. It showed that the current 100 000-plus NHS staff vacancies are undermining patient care and that the failure to invest in social care services for the infirm elderly is fuelling demand for hospital beds. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) (2019), in its State of Care report, similarly revealed that an estimated 1.4 million older people do not have access to all the care and support they need and that funding of social care in the community is at crisis level.

It is against this backdrop that this article discusses strategies to alleviate some of the problems with delayed transfer of elderly patients from hospital, specifically with reference to a factsheet published last August by Age UK (2019a), entitled Hospital Discharge. The factsheet makes an important contribution to the overall process of ensuring optimum discharge from hospital.