Delayed discharge from hospital

Background

Alzheimer’s Society has worked with the HSJ Information to analyse data on people living with dementia being kept in hospital unnecessarily. The data comes from NHS England but has not been published before.  

Delayed discharge from hospital happens when someone is deemed medically fit for discharge but is unable to return home.  

The causes of these delays are often poor planning and availability of dementia-appropriate follow-on support in health and social care services.

The figures we have obtained reveal the true extent of delays to discharge from hospital for people living with dementia.

Delayed discharge reduces the numbers of beds available, creating bottlenecks that affect other parts of the NHS and exacerbate current winter pressures.  

Key findings

The figures show that around a quarter (24%) of people aged 65 and over who are fit to be discharged but are kept in hospital for a week longer than necessary are believed to have dementia – nearly 29,000 people in one year.

The figures also show that the impact of dementia on delayed discharge gets worse the longer people stay in hospital. The proportion of people believed to have dementia rises to almost a third (31%) for patients kept in for at least 21 days longer than they should be.

The figures also reveal widespread variation at a local level, with some integrated care boards (ICBs) faring much worse than others.  

Read the full data set, including national level data and data for individual integrated care boards.

Rates of delayed discharge from hospital have risen steadily since the pandemic but as yet data on dementia specifically has not been publicly available. These figures includes the use of private beds by the NHS.  

In total, keeping people living with dementia in hospital unnecessarily accounts for 584,080 bed days, which we estimate cost the NHS £328m in 2024/25.  

The impact on people living with dementia

Staying in hospital unnecessarily increases a person’s risk of complications.  

Delayed discharge can be especially damaging for people living with dementia, who are more likely to struggle with the unfamiliar and often distressing hospital ward environment.

Risks include infections, falls, worsening cognitive function, poor mental health, malnutrition and dehydration.

Footnotes

Data produced in collaboration with HSJ Information. This work uses data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. Secondary care data is taken from the English Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database produced by NHS England, Copyright © 2025, NHS England. Re-used with the permission of NHS England. All rights reserved.  

Note: ‘People believed to have dementia’ refers to people whose hospital record identifies that they have dementia. This is likely to be inconsistent with GP records and is also likely to an underestimate – 1 in 3 people living with dementia do not currently have a diagnosis.  

Costs have been calculated using NHS England’s latest figure of £562 per day.