Lack of community care facilities and too few nursing home placements are fuelling rising waiting times for inpatient beds, the Bermuda Hospitals Board has said.

As bed waiting times for patients at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital’s emergency department surged to an average of 25 hours in the past fortnight surveyed, the BHB said a major reason was that people well enough to be discharged “do not have a safe place to go”.

An audit on June 22 — when wait times spiked at 33.9 hours on average — showed that nearly one in three acute care beds were still being occupied by people well enough to leave.

Average wait times for the 14 days monitored in the period from June 19 to July 2 saw a big leap from the previous fortnight’s figure of 17.4 hours.

Bed-blocking was cited by the BHB as a big cause of the situation.

A spokeswoman said: “Bermuda Hospitals Board continues to care for a high number of patients who are ready for discharge but are experiencing delays as they do not have a safe place to go.

“This relates to a lack of community services, not enough nursing home placements and cost-prohibitive options.”

The spokeswoman pointed to the audit taken on June 22, stating: “The audit showed there were 25 patients in acute-care beds at KEMH who no longer needed hospital services, but who were experiencing delays to their discharge.

“This translates to nearly one out of the three acute-care units being unavailable to patients in emergency who needed admission.

“The issues relating to discharging patients back to the community continues to increase wait times for emergency patients needing an acute-care bed.”

During the latest two-week period surveyed, there were 1,321 visits to the emergency department, representing an increase of 23 over the previous fortnight.

However, admissions decreased from 173 to 168 in that period.

The BHB spokeswoman added: “Wait times for triage, seeing a doctor and the length of stay in the department did not change significantly in this two-week period.

“The average time it took from arrival to being triaged over the two weeks increased by four minutes to 20 minutes, compared to 16 minutes in the previous two weeks.

“The average time to see a doctor was 68 minutes compared to 59 minutes and the total time spent in emergency from arrival to discharge for all patients was 3.6 hours compared to 3.8 hours.

“With June 19 being a public holiday in this two-week period, outpatient visits decreased to 2,688 from 3,481 in the prior period.

“The number of surgeries also decreased, with 296 taking place compared to 330 in the prior two weeks.”