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Shared Learning Seminar
To help promote improvements in the way public service organisations tackle delayed transfers of care, we held a Shared Learning Seminar on 19 November to report our findings, share good practice and highlight opportunities to address the remaining barriers to improvement. The outcomes of the Seminar will inform the report which we will lay before the National Assembly for Wales in the New Year. Click here for details.
Good practice case studies
Case studies that set out examples of how others have sought to tackle delayed transfers of care, which may be transferable to your organisation. Click here to visit
Useful links
Links to websites which contain useful information and advice on a range of issues relevant to delayed transfers of care. Click here to visit
Unscheduled care
The Wales Audit Office is currently undertaking a whole systems review of unscheduled care, which has many links with themes that are relevant to delayed transfers of care. For further details of this review click here. | We have developed these web pages to bring together the findings of our work on delayed transfers of care, to share case studies and examples of interesting practice which might help public bodies in Wales identify appropriate solutions to reduce the impact of delayed transfers of care on vulnerable older people’s independence and the use of NHS capacity.
A delayed transfer of care occurs when a patient is ready to transfer to the next stage of care, but is prevented by one or more reasons. These often arise when people transfer from a health care setting to social care services, but there are a range of factors involved.
The Wales Audit Office undertook a cross-cutting study of delayed transfers of care which resulted in the publication of four reports in November 2007. Our overall conclusion was that the independence of vulnerable older people and treatment of others continues to be compromised by unnecessary delays in hospital because the whole system problem of delayed transfers of care has not been tackled effectively in a whole systems way. Unnecessary delays compromise the independence of vulnerable older people who become delayed. Being unduly delayed in hospital is bad for those concerned because they can lose mobility, mental and physical function and ultimately their independence. Such delays also harm wider service delivery and performance across the whole health and social care system. In 2006/2007, 268,491 hospital bed days were occupied by delayed transfers of care in Wales, at a cost of £69 million.
We have done some further work to assess progress made to date, and more importantly to consider how organisations in Wales and beyond have sought to address the complex whole systems problems that contribute to delayed transfers of care. This website brings together the outputs of that work and provides links to our reports, case studies and other web resources which may be of use to health and social care organisations.
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