Statistics » Discharge delays (Acute)

Please note that this page is no longer being updated and the new pages for the acute discharge situation report and discharge ready date information are available here;

Acute Discharge Situation Report – Statistics » Acute discharge situation report

Discharge Ready Date – Statistics » Discharge ready date

Acute discharge situation report

Daily returns are collected from acute trusts through the COVID-19 acute daily discharge situation report (sitrep) and include data on daily discharges from acute settings.

The publication contains management data which has been set up for COVID-19 incident management and collected on a rapid turn-round basis from the NHS. The speed of the collection only permits minimal validation to be undertaken but the data is considered ‘fit-for-purpose’ as NHS management information.

Notes
1. Daily data are collected on discharges from acute hospitals, and a weekly snapshot is collected for information on patients who have remained in hospital since no longer meeting the criteria to reside decision was made.
2. Data definitions for data collected on discharge pathways and delay reasons changed from 27th May 2024 onwards.

Acute discharge situation report: technical specification

This guidance supports completion of the Acute discharge situation report (originally the Covid-19 emergency preparedness, resilience and response [EPRR] acute daily discharge situation report [1]) and replaces the previous technical specification that was introduced on 27 May 2022.

[1] The Covid-19 EPRR acute daily discharge situation report commenced on 8 April 2020, to collect data on the inpatient population of each type 1 acute trust and their discharge status each day, by submitting a template through the Strategic Data Collection Service portal.

Background and scope

The published monthly data file includes daily numbers of patients:

who no longer meet the criteria to reside
discharged
not discharged by the end of the day.

Monthly totals for:

discharge destinations.

Monthly averages for

delay reasons for patients with 14+ days length of stay.

And a weekly snapshot of:

number of additional days in total patients have remained in hospital since no longer meeting the criteria to reside decision was made (7+ days, 14+ days, and 21+ days length of stay).

Data are shown at regional, system and provider organisation level.

The published monthly time series file shows the metrics above at national level only.

This sitrep collects data for all inpatients 18 and over including critical care and COVID-19 positive patients but excluding paediatrics, maternity, and deceased patients. This includes data for acute trusts with a type 1 A&E department. Mental health trusts, specialised trusts (including children’s and women’s trusts) are not in scope of this collection.

Discharge ready date

The Urgent and emergency care recovery plan (published on 30 January 2023) committed to publishing, by the start of winter 2023, a metric or suite of metrics based on the time from a patient’s discharge-ready date to their actual date of discharge.

This publication will be classed as an official statistic in development and include only those trusts providing acceptable data throughout the reporting period.

Background and scope

The suite of metrics report on the percentage of discharges within certain thresholds and the total bed days after discharge ready date for patients discharged within certain thresholds.

Data are shown at national and provider organisation level.

This dataset is for all acute trusts and more information on the metrics and exclusions can be found in the technical guidance file further down.

Other collections

Weekly timeseries discharge delays data for the 22/23 winter period can be found in the statistical work area.

Please note the monthly publication and weekly timeseries figures are likely to differ.

Monthly publications data can be revised prior to publication where as weekly publications data do not undergo a revisions process.

Other information relating to delays is available in the delayed transfer of care (DTOC) page.

The DTOC metric is no longer being collected and publication has therefore ceased. The last publication of these data was for delays occurring in February 2020, published on 9 April 2020.

The DTOC data is not comparable with acute discharge delays data published on this page but does offer historic data on patients and days delayed at provider organisation level.