Almost a quarter of ambulance patients waited at least 30 minutes to be handed to A&E teams last week, while hospital bed occupancy was at the second highest level recorded this winter.
There are some positive signs: marginal improvements in bed capacity and ambulance handovers and flu patients declining.The delayed discharge of patients is still one of the biggest challenges.
Social care leaders do not like this term and say it is misleading as many of these patients still need ongoing clinical care albeit in their own homes. Social care leaders say the move is a short-term fix at best and the workforce crisis in social care must be addressed. There are still some 165,000 vacancies in this sector and recruitment and retention is a major issue.That correlates with recent flu and COVID reports that show infections since the start of the year have been declining. Hopefully this will continue giving hospitals such much-needed respite.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England's national medical director, said:"These figures show that the NHS remains under significant pressure, with near record highs of people in hospital who are medically fit to leave and a high number of beds occupied in hospitals across England.
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