Nearly 1 million patients have been discharged from hospitals in the middle of the night in the last four years
250,000 patients were ejected between 11pm and 6am last year
NEARLY 1million patients have been booted out of hospitals in the middle of the night over the past four years - despite fears it could be dangerous for vulnerable elderly people.
The number of patients kicked out of wards between 11pm and 6am is rising, with almost 220,000 discharged in 2012 while more than 250,000 were ejected this year.
Cases include dementia sufferers who were sent home alone, including a woman in her late 80s who died after she was discharged with someone else’s medicine and in clothes too thin for a cold night.
Cuts in social care budgets means elderly patients are often stuck in hospitals because they have no help to return home, but they must be discharged when the beds are needed.
The figures were revealed by The Times last night, which used Freedom of Information requests to discover overnight discharges jumped from 219,072 in 2012-13 to 252,261 in 2015-16.
Data was drawn from 89 out of 154 hospital trusts - meaning the total figure is likely to be much higher.
Former Parliamentary and Health Service ombudsman Dame Julie Mellor told the paper: “These failures will continue to happen unless the government tackles the heart of the problem - the chronic underfunding of social care.”
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But the stats come as Health secretary Jeremy Hunt warned Brits they need to start saving for their own care in future, telling a Lords committee on NHS sustainability yesterday: “We need as a country to start saving for our social care costs in the same way that we save for our pension.
“It needs to be as normal and automatic a thing for everyone to do.”
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