THE NHS hospital bed-blocking problem seems to be getting worse, may I suggest a radical approach?

It’s well known in industry that having two organisations responsible for a problem always leads to inefficiency with huge amounts of time devoted to showing that the other party is responsible, look at the railways.

In this case it’s the NHS versus the local councils who are responsible for out of hospital care, the outcome is that patients suffer. The hospital claims that the patient is fit to leave but then the council has to repeat this assessment and organise the care.

Could we consider having one body responsible for care of the ill or those needing medical support, that could be reasonably impartial in deciding whether care is given in a hospital, nursing home or at home. This would lead to a unified treatment without one body trying to second-guess or pass the cost to the other.

It could be that the councils loose their funding for this service and it’s given to the NHS as a total package or it could be that the councils replace the clinical commissioning groups that run the local NHS, this is for the politicians to resolve.

The outcome should be that patients get the best care at the least cost to the country, probably by creating short-stay nursing homes that need far less staffing than full hospitals, possibly even using the spare wards in hospital buildings. Think of the administration savings of stopping the blame game, surely that makes this scheme worthy of consideration. The patients might even benefit.

A Foster, Peterlee.