Thousands of elderly patients are stuck in hospital needlessly

Local authorities have been charged �100 a day for every patient stuck needlessly in hospital since 5 January.

The policy is supposed to give councils a financial incentive to tackle bed-blocking in NHS hospitals.

The British Medical Association criticised the decision to give councils money to help them pay fines. "It's lunacy," said Dr Andrew Dearden.

Stuck in hospital

The vast majority of patients stuck needlessly in hospital are elderly. While they are well enough to leave hospital, they are not well enough to go home.

They are often waiting for their local council to find them a place in a care home or to carry out improvements in their home to enable them to live there.

How one council has been affected Hampshire County Council received �1.2m from the Department of Health to help it improve services for patients stuck in hospital and pay the bed-blocking fines. In the first two weeks in January, it was fined �12,000. The council has had to employ 19 extra people to deal with the paperwork associated with these fines at a cost of �500,000.

A recent report from MPs suggested as many as 3,500 patients are stuck needlessly in hospital at any one time.

In most cases, they are taking up beds that could be used by other patients waiting for treatment.

Ministers said fining councils that failed to find alternative places for these patients would help to free up these beds.

The Department of Health has given councils �50m to cover the fines.

However, Health Minister Stephen Ladyman said the money should also be used to improve and extend services for patients stuck in hospital.

"Councils should be using their record amount of social services funding to invest in expanding older people's services.

"By doing this they avoid having to reimburse their local NHS hospital for the costs incurred when patients are needlessly delayed.

"If councils simply pay the charges as they accrue they will eventually incur more charges than are covered by the grant."

Mr Ladyman said councils who used the money simply to pay NHS fines would also fare badly in the next social services star ratings.

However, Dr Dearden accused the government of failing to think its policy through.

"The government is fining councils for being underfunded, even though it is responsible for failing to fund them properly in the first place," he told BBC News Online.

"It seems a very odd approach. Councils are also have to use some of this money to pay for staff to deal with these fines.

"They are being forced to spend money on bureaucracy rather than helping people."

Shadow Health Secretary Tim Yeo said: "It is shocking that the Department of Health is allocating �50m to pay fines that it itself set.