More than 1,000 days a month are lost to bed blocking in Bucks hospitals, new figures have revealed.
On an average day at the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, 37 beds are occupied by patients who no longer need to stay in hospital, according to figures from NHS England.
In May, the latest month for which figures are available, patients at the trust spent a total of 1,146 days waiting to be discharged or transferred to a different care facility - equivalent to more than three years of waiting time.
The figures show that 99 per cent of these delays were caused by problems with the NHS and one per cent by problems with social care.
Delayed transfers of care - which occurs when a patient remains in a bed after being officially declared ready for transfer - can happen for a variety of reasons, including bed shortages at residential or nursing homes and delays in setting up home care packages.
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