The number of older patients stranded in hospitals waiting on residential aged care or support at home has doubled in just under a decade.
And the average wait for those patients in Hunter hospitals for has blown out to an average of 20 days.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's 20th biennial report has revealed that the number of patients experiencing discharge delays has grown from 14,700 patients in 2014-5, to 29,600 in 2023-24.
Figures showing which patients waited longer and for what reasons remained rubbery, with any findings limited by a lack of nationally consistent data, the report said.
When the Newcastle Herald first requested aged care bed block figures in 2024 under freedom of information legislation, the answer was that "no data" was available for most Hunter hospitals throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park has since confirmed that the Hunter and Shoalhaven health districts had "the highest numbers of people" affected by the issue.
He concedes that hospitals are not designed to be places where people "spend months and months on end".
According to the latest Bureau of Health Information quarterly performance statistics, the number of days that non-acute patients spend in Hunter hospitals has increased to 20 days during the first quarter of this year, up from 15 days in 2021.
President of the NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association, Fred Betros, said that across NSW almost 1300 patients were stranded in a hospital, and he pointed the finger at the federal government over a lack of aged care beds and NDIS placements.
"These patients no longer need acute hospital treatment," Dr Betros said. "They are ready to leave, but there is nowhere safe for them to go. "
The impact was felt right across the system in the Hunter New England Local Health District, where hospitals recorded their highest number of bed days for a summer quarter, despite treating slightly fewer patients, in the January to March 2026 quarter, while patients who did not require acute care were staying an average 20 days.
"When a patient cannot leave hospital, their bed remains occupied," Dr Betros said.
"The patient waiting in the emergency department cannot move to a ward and planned surgery can be delayed. With longer stays, older patients can lose strength, mobility, confidence and independence simply because the Federal Government has not provided the services they need outside hospital."
Discharge delays in the public health system prompted a NSW Productivity and Quality Commission Inquiry to review the situation, which is due to deliver recommendations in November.
The AIHW is also performing analyses using linked data to assess whether older patients with certain conditions are more likely to experience a delayed discharge from hospital, for example, dementia diagnosis.
While delayed discharges were the immediate focus of national consistency, the approach has broader relevance, as man other health system areas shared similar data challenges, the AIHW report says.
John Hunter Hospital staff have spoken out about the strain that bed block is having on their staff and patients, saying the hospital was short between 40 and 65 beds across the hospital every day.
Rosie Dewil, the hospital's branch president for the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association, said the hospital was frequently in code black, meaning they had more patients than beds, a rare phenomenon pre-COVID.
"Sometimes people come out of an operation and need an intensive care bed, but there isn't one available," Ms Dewil said.
"And sometimes we can't discharge people from intensive care to the wards because there isn't a bed available."
