Patients sent home from hospital with no advice on how to cope, watchdog finds

Record numbers of patients are being sent home from hospital without being told how to look after themselves, a watchdog has found.

A major report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reveals the proportion of patients - 60 per cent - given written advice on how to cope in the aftermath of a hospital stay has reached a 10-year low.

The regulator also sounded “alarm bells” that a significant proportion of patients discharged with medication - 44 per cent - are not being told about possible side-effects to watch out for.

The findings, published as part of the annual Adult Inpatient Survey for 2018, form part of a wider decline in satisfaction with NHS hospital services.

It follows a Telegraph investigation last December which revealed a 20 per cent five-year rise in patients being discharged from hospital at night, many of them vulnerable and elderly.

Health service chiefs have since pledged to improve the coordination and safety of hospital discharge.

However, the CQC survey found that only one out of four respondents are being told whom they can contact if they are worried about their condition once they leave hospital.

Meanwhile 15 per cent said they did not receive enough notice that they were about to be discharged.

Overall, 48 per cent of the 75,000 adults surveyed rated their hospital experience as nine or above out of 10, down from 50 per cent in and the first time this measure has gone down.

Professor Ted Baker, Chief Inspector of Hospitals, praised the hard work by NHS staff but blamed “pressure on the system” for damaging patient satisfaction.

“I am disappointed to see the overall lack of progress this year and that in some cases people are reporting poorer experiences, particularly around the quality of information when they were discharged and the integration of their care from different parts of the system,” he said.

“Last year’s survey showed a healthcare system still delivering improvements despite growing pressure.

“But this year, the improvement trend we have seen for the past six years has not been sustained.”

Failures adequately to inform patients about what happens to the while in hospital also affected A&E.

The survey showed that nine per cent had not been “any” information about their condition or treatment while in the emergency department.

While the majority of people reported being treated with dignity and respect in 2018 - 80 per cent - this number has decreased from 82 per cent the previous year.

More than a third of patients surveyed said they had to wait a long time before getting a bed, and the proportion satisfied with their wait dropped from 63 per cent in 2017 to 61 per cent last year.

Of the 41 per cent of people who said their discharge was delayed in July 2018, 26 per cent said this was by longer than four hours, compared to 24 per cent the previous year.

Dan Wellings, Senior Fellow at The King’s Fund think tank, said: “Patients tell us time and time again that being treated with dignity and respect is the most important thing they expect from the NHS, so the decline in the number of people saying they experienced this, albeit still at relatively high levels, should ring alarm bells.

“There is also significant work to do around the process of leaving hospital and preparing people for what happens next.”