Figures just out reveal that there has been a rise in bed blocking in Scotland during July, with 62 patients seeing their discharge dates delayed by more than six weeks, in comparison to no such instances in April this year, according to the Press Association. In June, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced plans to fine hospitals if patients were readmitted within 30 days as he deemed the readmission process to be more expensive than keeping patients in hospitals longer, so could there be a connection?
While the readmission fines are still in the planning stages, the subject was raised by Mr Lansley at the beginning of June and he was very critical of the number of patients readmitted due to early release. It seems that attempts to counter these criticisms may have resulted in over-compensating, with patients remaining in hospital care for longer than required.
Deciding when to discharge a patient can be a difficult decision for clinicians, which can be further complicated by a variety of financial considerations that they have to take into mind. This is where having access to detailed financial implications is of the upmost importance. Through Ardentia’s Patient Level Costing solution, financial managers and clinicians alike can gain access to the precise details of how much an individual patient’s care costs – calculating all of the contributing factors separately, so that each stage can be analysed separately.
Having such information to hand allows clinicians to look at exactly how much it has cost to continue providing hospital care to a patient with a similar condition versus the readmission costs for a patient who may have been discharged too early. Such decisions can be a fine balance, which is why having as much data to work with as possible to help support these choices is so important.
