THE Royal Bolton Hospital has up to nearly 50 people on its wards who do not need to be there.

Health bosses have said that action needs to be taken to tackle “extremely high” bed blocking numbers.

It is been reported that the hospital has an average 50 patients on its wards who could be discharged if they could be sufficiently cared for at home.

The figures were revealed by members of the NHS Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) board at its Friday meeting. GP and clinical director Barry Silvert said: “Bolton hospital had extremely high bed capacity generally over winter, in the region of 90 percent.

“The length of stay was higher than the target of 4.6 days. In effect it was round about 4.8 days.

“There is inevitably always going to be an issue of if a patient isn’t in hospital where should they, and could they be.

“In an ideal world we would be able to provide more bed-based care. It is unquestionable that the discharged processes could be improved.”

Dr Silvert explained that the winter figures were affected by a shortfall in discharge staff due to ill health and Bolton Foundation Trust had identified eight different areas of improvement in its discharge process.

It highlighted the need to improve care in the community, which has been an aim of the Bolton Locality Plan which sets out reforms in the town’s health and social care over the next five years.

David Herne, director of Public Health in Bolton, argued that there was an added pressure from admissions.

Chairman Wirin Bhatiani said: “Patients have talked about this problem, where they have got better but can’t be discharged because there is no care package at home so they get ill again.

“The more frequently this happens the more their quality of life is lowered. The hospital has told us at any one point it has up to 50 beds occupied by patients that don’t require any further care and the hospital cannot discharge them and they don’t have the facilities to look after then properly at home.”