PATIENTS have been stranded in hospital beds for more than 50,000 days because of the county's bedblocking crisis.

Shocking new figures released by the national spending watchdog show Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust lost 50,256 bed days to patients medically fit enough to be discharged but stranded in hospital.

That was nearly double any other acute hospital in the country, with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust coming second bottom of the list with 29,803 delayed days.

But Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group's (OCCG) board of directors heard yesterday radical £2m plans to tackle the crisis were working, with the county rising to fourth bottom in the rankings this April.

Delivery and localities director Diane Hedges told board members the pilot project to tackle the problem had managed to cut the number of lost bed days by 1,000 a month since it began last year.

She added: "We set ourselves a target and we have for many years been consistently the worst, but for April this year we were the fourth worst in the country.

"We are actually on trajectory and on our way to improvement."

Bosses at Oxford Health, OUH, OCCG and the county council unveiled the £2m pilot plans to tackle the problem in November last year.

The plans involved moving the 159 delayed patients into temporary intermediate care beds in 17 nursing homes while they were assessed and then moved on.

Despite a spike in January which saw the number of delayed patients rise to 168 across OUH and Oxford Health, the number had fallen to 96 by May 12 - 70 in OUH and 26 at Oxford Health.

OUH clinical services director Paul Brennan said 320 patients had been moved out of hospital beds through the scheme, but admitted it had not been as successful as first hoped.

He added: "This is good news for these patients who have received assessment and care in a more appropriate environment while their ongoing care plans are arranged.

"While we have been successful in transferring patients to intermediate care beds, we recognise that we have not reduced the numbers of patients who remain delayed in our hospitals by as much as we hoped."

The National Audit Office (NAO) released a new report into discharging older patients, which revealed bedblocking is costing the NHS £820m a year.

It found that between March last year and February patients had spent 50,256 days in OUH acute care beds because their discharge had been delayed unnecessarily.

Latest snapshot figures from NHS England show Oxfordshire was still at the bottom of table in March, with 106 delayed patients at OUH and 30 at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Health bosses said one of the problems was caused by a lack of staff to help patients get back into their own homes and care for them there.

To tackle the home care problems OUH held a recruitment day to bolster its 37-strong team of home care support workers and managed to hire 62 new staff with 64 further candidates applying online.

Healthwatch Oxfordshire executive director Carol Moore said she hoped the county's health leaders would work with the Government and NHS England to tackle the problem.

She added: "Health and social care providers in Oxfordshire are to be commended for trying new and innovative ways of reducing delayed transfers of care in the county.

"However it is clear from the data released by the National Audit Office that this is still a huge problem, both locally and at a national level."