A CASH injection of £700,000 will help to move up to 100 patients out of congested North Yorkshire hospitals and into private nursing homes.

The money, provided by the North Yorkshire Health Authority, will allow patients whose discharge from hospital has been delayed to be transferred to nursing and residential homes in a bid to free hospital beds.

People who are waiting for a place in a nursing home are presently occupying about 128 beds in hospitals across North Yorkshire, which is eight per cent of the county's acute bed capacity. The highest figures are from York District Hospital, with 55 beds blocked.

These delayed discharges are resulting in serious problems such as cancelled operations, longer trolley waits in accident and emergency departments and delays to ambulances attending call-outs.

But one York nursing home owner, Tony Tate, of Laurens Manor in Lawrence Street, said the cash was too little, too late.

"This is not enough to solve the problem. We are not being paid enough money to care for the people and more and more nursing homes are going out of business.

"What will they do then?"

Barrie Fisher, chief executive of North Yorkshire Health Authority, said: "There is an urgent need to tackle this problem. This initiative will not solve the problem of delayed discharges in the medium to long term: we are simply tackling the immediate log-jam by paying for people to go to a nursing or residential home as soon as possible."

Updated: 09:42 Saturday, August 25, 2001