Long stay log jam for hospital beds

More than 500 people in Western Australia's health system spent thousands of days stranded in hospital beds because of a shortage of aged and disability care places.

Auditor general Caroline Spencer has painted a bleak picture of the bed block in a report, which concludes the inability to safely release a certain criteria of patient is costing the state millions of dollars.

"Freeing up that capacity could potentially have provided hospital access for over 14,000 more people and reduced the cost of caring for the long stay patients by $71.8 million," Ms Spencer said.

"Our analysis of snapshots between May 2021 and June 2022 revealed that nearly 500 patients waiting for NDIS or aged care services had spent approximately 40,000 extra days in hospital after being medically ready for discharge."

Ms Spencer was also critical of the Department of Health's data collection and real-time understanding of the issue of "stranded" patients.

"WA Health does not have an effective system for managing long-stay patients," she said in the report.

"The department, as system manager, does not know, in real time, how many patients across WA Health remain in hospital when they are medically fit for discharge and therefore has limited understanding of the cost and impact on hospital bed capacity and patient flow."

In relation to long-stay patients with mental health issues, the report found that in April 2021, 152, or 25 per cent, of the 675 mental health inpatient beds were occupied by patients medically ready for discharge.

Ms Spencer said these patients could not be discharged because there was no access to community services, including accommodation.

There are 80 hospital sites in WA, and 7,215 beds, which cost an average of $2,370 a day to operate.

"Between May 2021 to December 2021, there were an average of 116 patients waiting in hospital for access to NDIS funded services," the report said.

"On average, patients without a mental health diagnosis stayed 112 days longer in hospital than needed. Those with a mental health diagnosis stayed 356 days longer than medically necessary, which is nearly three times longer.

"Collectively, they stayed 29,584 extra days in hospital."