A Lanarkshire hospital patient had to wait nine months before finally being discharged from hospital, new stats have shown.
A Freedom of Information request revealed that nearly 500 patients in the region's three hospitals had to wait over 22 days before being allowed out, mostly due to waiting for care packages and support to be made available.
Patients in the region faced an average delay of eight days before their delayed discharge, which is the second lowest rate in Scotland.
Almost 600 (594) patients were released within three days of being able to leave, 355 were between four and five days and a further 273 were out within a week.
Another 92 were able to go home eight to 14 days late, 56 were out within 15 to 21 days, and 475 people were still waiting after 22 days.
The longest average waits for patients to be discharged were in Dumfries and Galloway and the Highlands, while the longest wait by any patient was NHS Tayside, where a resident had to wait 1835 days, or over five years, before being discharged.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, who serve some patients in the Rutherglen area, did not prove any information regarding their numbers.
Alex Cole-Hamilton, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, who carried out the FOI, said the figures must improve.
He told Lanarkshire Live : "Delayed discharges have a huge impact on patients and their families. Once you are declared fit to leave, there is nothing more disheartening than being forced to wait in a hospital as the days tick by.
“Delayed discharges involve eye-watering sums of money for the NHS and in the majority of cases it is an entirely avoidable problem.
"Most people are waiting on a care home place, social care support to enable them to live in their own home or for an assessment to be conducted.
“It has been a full five years since the SNP’s target to end delayed discharges was missed. Despite plan after plan ministers haven’t managed to make a dent in the problem.
"It is time they delivered a step change in social care pay and conditions to open up the options for moving people out of hospital and into more suitable care as soon as they are ready."
Recent figures from Public Health Scotland showed 1 in 14, or seven per cent, of beds in NHS Scotland were occupied by people who were delayed in their discharge, of whom 66 per cent were due to health and social care reasons such as care packages not being available.
Soumen Sengupta, Chief Officer for South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care, said: "We appreciate that coming into hospital for an operation or procedure can often feel like the beginning of a daunting and complicated journey.
"When people are admitted, regardless of the reason for that admission, the first question invariably asked is ‘when can I go home?’
"Our Planned Date of Discharge (PDD) programme aims to establish a clear date for when someone will go home or to a community setting at the earliest possible stage during their stay in hospital.
"By providing a clear route-map through the hospital ‘journey’, PDD is geared to reducing any uncertainty and anxiety - and also contribute to our ongoing work to reduce delayed discharges."
Ross McGuffie, chief officer of Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire, said reducing delayed discharges was a "key priority" and steps continue to be taken to make improvements happen.
He added: "Recently announced national funding is being prioritised towards expanding our 'home support and integrated rehabilitation teams’' capacity, as well as creating new 'home first' teams to support more timely discharges and assessments in the community.
“Clearly the rapid rise in community transmission of the new Omicron variant has had a significant impact on both service demand and capacity.
"To help reduce the strain and focus on the most medically unwell, we are asking family, carers and friends of someone in need of care at home to help out where possible and only if it is safe to do so."
Public Health Scotland estimated that the cost of delayed discharges in NHS Scotland amounted to £142m last year, with an average daily bed cost of £262.
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