Discharged patients not fit to send home, says GP

Dr Zahid Chauhan: patients being sent home who have no business being out of hospital

AN OLDHAM doctor has warned Government pressure to discharge hospital patients quickly is proving a big headache for GPs and might endanger lives.

Dr Zahid Chauhan is one of a number of local GPs who have recently treated patients they believed should still be in hospital.

“Government is leaning on staff to discharge patients to meet targets” said Dr Chauhan, who is also an Alexandra ward Labour councillor. “This must be abhorrent to dedicated hospital staff who want to treat patients as human beings, not numbers.

“While I support the idea of treating people closer to home, frankly, some of those being discharged are far too vulnerable to care for themselves. With the collapse of social care, you wonder what they are returning to. For older folks it could mean a cold home, no food and no-one to look after them.”

A lot of the onus to care for discharged patients falls to community nursing teams and family doctors.

Dr Chauhan said: “We have a huge shortage of GPs and while we are doing what we can, making frequent home visits and providing the kind of care a hospital would is virtually impossible.”

Selected hospital trusts across the country have set up schemes to help patients get home more quickly. Dr Chauhan said: “Where once we had properly-funded discharge staff, we now have administrators, accountants and HR professionals on wards, contacting social services and making sure patients are discharged. How did we reach such a desperate situation?”

Dr Chauhan added: “A healthcare colleague of mine recently told me about how he visited a hospital discharge suite and was horrified to see how frail some of the patients were. They were hours or minutes away from being discharged into the community.”