BED blocking is once again on the increase at York District Hospital, with one patient waiting for almost a year to be transferred off a ward.

There are currently 58 patients awaiting transfer off acute wards and the hospital's operational director, Susan Acott, said she was concerned about the upward trend, which started to develop only weeks after the hospital reached its set target in March.

Although the problem has not reached the levels of last August, when numbers of delayed transfers peaked around the 80 mark, the situation is worsening.

The hospital is considered at risk of not reaching its latest target of 28 delayed discharges by the end of the year so a team from the Department of Health and the Social Services Inspectorate visited and is due to report back with advice and guidance in the next few weeks.

Possible ideas include creating halfway houses, or transitional care areas, where patients could be housed until appropriate accommodation is arranged.

Ms Acott said: "I'm fairly concerned about the trend and the reasons for that trend are the continuing loss of nursing and residential home beds in the community and the extremely acute shortage of beds for elderly mentally ill patients that's also affecting us.I think we are being as proactive as we can from a hospital perspective."

Ms Acott said that each patient had different needs and reasons for their delay. She said: "There have been people waiting over 400 days, and City of York Council has put a lot of effort into these long stay patients. Usually their needs are very complicated and it's difficult to find nursing homes suitable."

Simon Pleydell, chief executive of the York Health Services NHS Trust, is discussing the issue with the trust board today. He said: "This is something that we have really got to get to grips with over the summer months to make sure we are in a better position as we head into the winter."

City of York Council leaders also meet this week to discuss setting up a partnership aimed at unblocking beds.

The new Health and Social Care Partnership Board would include the council, the NHS and representatives of independent and voluntary care organisations.

Experts will tell the council's executive on Friday that the situation is worsening because of closures of nursing and residential homes, with 79 beds lost since October 2001 and another 34 expected to go next month.

Updated: 12:07 Wednesday, June 26, 2002