THE bed-blocking situation in Dorset is “still not good enough” but work is being done to improve the situation, councillors have been told.

A report on delays in transfers of care to Dorset County Council's health and scrutiny committee showed that at the end of the last financial year, Dorset was 146th out of 151 in a league table of local authorities.

By May this year it was 141st and in June there were still more than 2,000 delayed days - the number of days spent by patients in hospital when they no longer need to be there.

Harry Capron, assistant director for adult care at the county council, said a lot of work had been done to address the “challenges” facing the county, but he admitted there was still more to be done.

He said: “We have had a historic challenge around delayed transfers of care.

“Our position is still not good enough and we have still got a lot to do across the health and care system but it is better than it was.”

Mr Capron said that systems were being put in place across acute and community hospitals so that patients could be appropriately assessed when they no longer needed to remain in a hospital setting and moved to the right location as soon as possible.

He said: “We know people staying in hospital is not good for them unless they are actually receiving some positive interventions.”

Mr Capron added that the “inter-relationship between services is fundamental” to the success of tackling the issue.

One of the areas of work was looking at hospitals discharging patients earlier in the day to improve the flow of patients while other areas of improvement including looking at the community services on offer, particularly in more rural areas such as north Dorset.

He said: “One of the challenges we have in Dorset is we don’t have some of the community services out there.

“That is something we are trying to work on so we can actually offer a consistent range of services no matter where people are.”

Chairman of the committee Ronald Coatsworth welcomed the work being proposed and said he hoped to see it come to fruition.

He said: “It’s one of the most important things we face and one of the reasons we get so many complaints.

“It has to be done well.”