BBC Scotland News
Prof Angela Wallace, right, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s nurse director, says significant delays can come from patients not having power of attorney in place to approve their care plans.
This is a legal way to give somebody you trust the power to make financial and welfare decisions on your behalf.
If patients come to hospital after an illness and no longer have capacity to make decisions for themselves, it can lead to significant delays when they are ready to be discharged.
The current system means that a guardianship order has to be put in place – but it has to go through the courts and that can take many months.
Patients can hold up care for others when they do not have the legal documents required to leave hospital.
Hospitals across Scotland are working at capacity.
Bed shortages on wards means patients are cared for in corridors, waiting too long in A&E or finding that a long-awaited operation is cancelled.
But each day, an average of 2,000 people are unable to get out of hospital despite being medically fit to be discharged.
There are many reasons why people are getting stuck in hospital, ranging from a lack of social care workers to a shortage of spaces in care homes.
But Prof Wallace said one of the biggest reasons for patients being delayed in their discharge was down to not having the right legal documents in place.
She says that across her health board right now there are 300 patients unable to get out of hospital despite not needing to be there.