THE Scottish Health Secretary has said that considerable investment is being made to tackle lost beds in hospitals.

This follows MSP Alex Rowley's criticism that bed days lost were continuing to rise in Fife.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said they were determined to tackle delayed discharge. "That’s why we’re investing £30 million a year, over three years, to accelerate improvements," she said. "This money has been used to open intermediate care beds, assess people in more appropriate settings and to focus on caring for people at home by investing in home care, new technology and reablement.

“While levels of delayed discharge will fluctuate from month to month, levels of delayed discharge remain consistently below that of last year and we are making progress in reducing the amount of time people are delayed in hospital. This stands in stark contrast to the position in England, where there have been recent reports of both delayed discharge rates rising rapidly and concerns about the accuracy of the data.

“We are continuing our work with health and social care partnerships to tackle this issue and to ensure there are firm plans in place for winter so that there is sufficient hospital capacity to meet local needs.”

A spokesperson for Fife’s Health and Social Care Partnership defended the figures and said that over the last year, their performance has continued to show signs of improvement.

“The total number of bed days lost to patients in delay has reduced from 4358 in August 2015 to 3823 in August 2016; this is a reduction of 535 days, representing an improvement of 12 per cent from last year," said the spokesperson.

"Furthermore, within this figure, the number of patients in delay who are awaiting home-based or alternative care has seen a more significant drop of 718, whilst the number of patients with more complex needs has increased by 183 during the same period.

“Beds have been reduced as part of our Re-Shaping Care agenda, which is supporting a move to more community-based care for people who have complex and on-going conditions; this includes greater partnership working with our voluntary sector colleagues to offer alternatives to hospital-based care.”