Cole-Hamilton: £440m delayed discharge cost "utterly astonishing"

Responding to public spending watchdog reporting that delayed discharges cost the NHS alone at least £440 million a year, with the full cost to the health and social care system likely to be much higher, only the SNP Government no longer calculate it, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“It is utterly astonishing that our NHS is losing £1.2 million a day to delayed discharge under the SNP. These are people who should be cared for in the community at a quarter of the cost.

“The SNP's abject failure to provide proper care at home or in the community is leaving 2,000 patients stuck in hospital on a typical night. It’s why A&E departments are struggling to move people into hospital and why ambulances are stacking up outside.

“By backing Scottish Liberal Democrats on your second, peach ballot paper in May, you can vote for a realistic plan to fix social care, so that we can fix the NHS.

"As the party of social care, we would create a new UK-wide minimum wage for care workers, £2 higher than the national minimum wage, to tackle the chronic staff shortages and make caring a profession of choice."