'BED-BLOCKING' has cost hospitals in East Lancashire £10m in ONE year, the Lancashire Telegraph can reveal.

East Lancashire Hospitals Trust (ELHT) spent £10,706,261 on excess bed day costs in 2016/17 and the figure has been branded 'unacceptable'.

The year also saw 301 delayed transfer of cares from hospitals, more than four times the 70 recorded in 2015/16, with 135 recorded to date in 2017/18.

It means that there were 506 delayed transfers of care in three years, according to the freedom of information figures obtained by the Telegraph.

Data shows that one patient waited as long as 77 days to be discharged from hospital, with another patient waiting 54 days and another for 30 days.

The national cost of 'bed-blocking', which is the long-term occupation of hospital beds, chiefly by elderly people due to a shortage of suitable care elsewhere, is more than £1.3bn.

Former health boss Cllr Azhar Ali, the Labour leader on Lancashire County Council, said he blamed government cuts to adult social care budgets for the cost.

Cllr Ali said: "This Tory-run government has cut hundreds of millions of pounds from the adult social care budgets of Blackburn with Darwen council and Lancashire County Council since 2010.

"The fact is there are not enough care homes places for people to go to when they need to be discharged from hospital, creating this bed-blocking situation.

"It is not the fault of the local authorities or the health trust who are being asked to more with less resources and funding.

"These cuts are creating more pressures for the NHS, with bed shortages, increased pressures on A&Es, patients waiting in trolleys and ambulances queuing outside A&Es.

"The NHS is very quickly going into meltdown and back to the days of the workhouses."

East Lancashire's patients' champion Russ McLean described the figures as 'staggering'.

He said: "The fact is elderly patients have nowhere to go in the community when they're ready for discharge.

"This is because of central government cuts to adult social care budgets, with the number of care homes places available in the community continuing to go down.

"Because of this, the criteria to get into these homes has become harder, and people are dying during the time they have to wait.

"It's clearly an unacceptable situation."

But John Bannister, director of operations at ELHT, said the trust had achieved 'significant improvements' in reducing the number of delayed transfers of care.

He said: “For the past two years, working hand-in-hand with our NHS and social care partners, the trust has achieved significant improvements in reducing the number of delayed transfers of care, improvements which benefit more and more patients.

“In 2015, trust staff responsible for patient discharges became an integrated discharge service.

"This meant health and social care staff could avoid duplication of patient assessments and reduce waiting times in hospital for onward care.

“In April this year, we introduced ‘Home First’, an initiative to ensure patients do not wait in hospital for assessments and go home at the first opportunity after acute illness.

"This has resulted in a hugely positive impact on hospital delays when offering this supported discharge to home.

"Due to the success of the Home First pilot, health and social care teams across Pennine Lancashire now have the resources to offer ’Home First’ to all patients."

But the government said delays are back down to levels last seen in summer 2016 and to help tackle the problem, it said it had set 'clear expectations' on the NHS and local authorities to reduce the number of delayed days.

'Greater transparency' has also been introduced through publishing a dashboard showing how areas in England are performing included delayed discharges

It also said it is committed to improving social care in the country and have provided £2bn in additional funding.

Plans to reform social care to ensure it is 'sustainable for the future' will be published next year, it added.

A department of health spokesman said: “No one should have to stay in hospital longer than necessary - that’s why we’ve freed up more than 1,000 extra beds since February.

"Local authorities and the NHS are working hard to reduce delayed transfers of care by speeding up assessments and reducing waits for home care.”