Hospitals
Question
Helen Maguire
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much the time taken to discharge patients costs the NHS each year.
Answer
Dr Zubir AhmedThe Department does not hold data on the annual cost of discharge delays. However, from September 2025, NHS England has started to publish data on the cost of discharge. This information is available at the following link:
The following table shows the total cost of delays to bed days for September and October of 2025:
Month | Total cost of delayed bed days |
September 2025 | £219,719,520 |
October 2025 | £230,824,078 |
This estimates that the unit cost of a bed day is £562, which is derived from the £527 2023/25 bed day cost, and which has been uplifted by 6.65% to estimate bed day costs for 2025/26 using the NHS Cumulative Uplift Factor to account for inflation, resulting in a unit cost of £562.
This analysis does not include wider costs, such as the opportunity cost of care foregone by not being able to admit other patients, or the cost to the patient themselves of being in an inappropriate setting. The estimates do not consider the alternative cost of providing health and care support to patients outside of the acute hospital setting if these patients were not delayed in hospital.