An increase in the number of people being discharged from hospital with ongoing care needs is placing pressure on North Yorkshire's social care system.
North Yorkshire Council's Corporate Director for Health and Adult Services is Richard Webb:
"Since COVID, we've seen a significant increase in hospital discharges. So pre COVID there were about nine per day. They're now averaging 15, 16 per day, many weeks. There are higher than that, I wanna say. Recognize the. Hard work of all of our teams who turn around people's discharges so quickly and actually are working with a higher volume of pace work in, in that field.
"That puts significant pressure on our services. It also means we have to make a regular decision about the balance between supporting people already in the community and people coming out of hospital. And it's probably worth remembering that there are people, older people with physical frailty or dementia or mental health issues in the community who deserve equal treatment, and that's always the important balancing act."
Hospital discharge activity averaged 15.5 discharges per day during Q1 compared with 16.9 per day recorded for Q4, which was inflated by the 18.1 per day recorded for January. The chart below highlights that activity so far this year has been running at similar levels to those experienced during 2024/25, although the total number of discharges increased in each month of Q1 this year. For Q1 in 2024/25, discharges averaged 16.0 per day.
Local activity is subject to high levels of volatility day-to-day, with local health and care systems continuing to be subject to localised surges in discharge activity, which can affect different localities on different days, with capacity amongst local care providers being quickly used up. During Q4 there were 42 days on which discharges exceeded 20 per day (46 in Q4), including 8 days above 30 discharges per day (6 in Q4).
Here's Councillor Michael Harrison:
"But if I can just add we up until now we've talked about pre COVID levels and post COVID levels of discharges. We are now treating the current levels as the norm. And it's worth reflecting on the fact that we do not receive the funding.
To cover what is now what we view as normal levels of discharge. And that's having a significant financial pressure, notwithstanding the impact on people who need care."
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