Number of people stuck in hospital reaches new high

Responding to new Public Health Scotland figures which showed 1,991 were stuck in hospital in June due to their discharge being delayed, the highest number of people delayed since the guidelines were updated in 2016, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“Under SNP management, Scotland's care services are in crisis and these figures show more people than ever are stuck in hospital unnecessarily. It's worsening their health, contributing to record-breaking waits in A&E and leading to dangerous ambulance delays.

“The SNP’s ill-fated centralisation of social care will do nothing to ease pressures- it must be scrapped.

“Scottish Liberal Democrats would devote the money for this billion-pound bureaucracy to frontline services and staff instead. We want to see a £500m rescue package that will enable people to be released from hospital and relieve the pressure on the NHS. We would create a new minimum wage for care workers, £2 higher than the national minimum wage, to tackle the chronic staff shortages in care and make social care a profession of choice again.”