New research from The King's Fund finds that delayed discharges cost NHS £2.7bn, up 7.5% on previous year

The financial cost of delayed discharges has risen to £2.7bn in 2025/26, up 7.5% in just one-year, new King's Fund analysis has found.

It comes as the NHS is expected to release the latest figures for the number of people who experienced corridor care in the month of June and the latest delayed discharge figures. In May, the number of instances of corridor care was close to 70,000.

A delayed discharge is when a patient remains in a hospital bed despite being clinically fit enough to leave. This occurs for several reasons including stretched capacity in NHS community services and the social care system for the patient to be transferred into, and administrative bottlenecks such as coordination with care transfer hubs.

Last year there were nearly 13,000 delayed discharges daily, up 300 on the 2024/25 daily average. This means close to one in 10 of all hospital beds at any given point in time are being taken up by someone who was fit enough to be discharged.

The latest NHS figures show that the cost of a bed day has now hit £562. That is up from an estimated £536 last year and 10% on 2022/23's figure of £512. The result is that delayed discharges are now costing the NHS £2.7 billion a year.

These delays cause frustrations for patients who are stuck in hospital beds, unable to leave and get back to their friends and family whilst knowing sicker patients need your bed. The impacts also trickle down into the rest of the system with A&Es becoming backed-up, unable to admit people into hospital and leading to awful cases of corridor care, with almost 70,000 instances reported last month.

The physical, emotional and mental impact of both issues cannot be overstated. Healthwatch describes emotional toll on patients waiting corridors, as people often experience a mix of fear, anxiety and embarrassment. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has previously drawn a link between corridor care and excess deaths. Recent work of theirs also found that long A&E waits could be responsible for 300 deaths a week last year.

These issues also have an impact on staff. The Royal College of Nursing describes how staff feel frustrated and demoralised by corridor care. Delayed discharges can leave staff feeling disillusioned about their roles as the pressure to discharge patients can sometimes feel dehumanising.

The government has previously pledged to end corridor care and part of the solution to that will be reducing delayed discharges through steps included in the Urgent and Emergency Care plan for 2025/26. To meet this target the government must also tackle reducing incoming demand for care, something hospitals have less direct control over, by effectively implementing the shift to community care, reforming social care and being bolder on primary prevention through action like tackling obesity.

Danielle Jefferies, Senior Analyst at The King's Fund, said:

‘The rising costs of delayed discharges will put even more pressure on already stretched NHS budgets alongside contributing to longer waits in A&E and more harrowing cases of corridor care.

'Patients are being left stranded in hospital beds, frustrated at being unable to leave despite being well enough to do so, knowing that sicker patients need their bed with little they can do about it.

‘A range of issues cause this backlog, including stretched adult social care and NHS community services, to administrative quagmires, all which trickles down into A&E waiting rooms and the consequences are felt acutely by patients.

‘Solving these issues will of course be key to reaching the government’s goal of ending corridor care by 2029 and reducing the financial and human burden of delayed discharge but it is not just within hospitals and the care system that government should be looking to for solutions.

‘Ultimately, these problems can only be addressed sustainably by reducing incoming demand on hospitals. That means the government must be much bolder in tackling wider issues like obesity or moving care out of hospitals by effectively implementing greater community care.’