What to do when someone is leaving hospital

Under the Health and Care Act 2022, NHS hospital trusts in England have a duty to involve unpaid carers, meaning you, as early as possible when a patient's discharge is being planned. If a ward has not asked whether you are involved in your relative's care, say so rather than waiting to be asked. The hospital discharge and post-operative care pillar page has the wider picture of the weeks either side of this one.

One claim worth correcting here: NHS Continuing Healthcare is sometimes described as something your relative must apply for before they will be "allowed home" if they live alone. That is not right. Continuing Healthcare is a specific, health-led funding route for people whose care needs are mainly about their health rather than daily living, and it is not a requirement for going home. What decides whether a discharge home is safe is the hospital's own assessment of what support will be in place, whether that is family, reablement or a carer you arrange. If your relative's needs do turn out to be mainly health-based, for example following a stroke or with a complex condition, NHS Continuing Healthcare explained sets out the test and how to ask for the screening checklist. For the fuller picture of the free six weeks, the review that follows it, and the three routes that can come after, funding care after a hospital stay covers that in depth. If your relative has savings below £23,250 once the free period ends, local authority funding for care at home explains how the council's means test works and how to ask for it.

This can take a few different forms. A short stay in a community hospital or a rehabilitation unit gives more time for physiotherapy and nursing input than a few visits a week at home could provide. A temporary bed in a care home works the same way for some people, particularly after a bad fall or a long stay in a hospital bed, and it is meant to be a step towards home rather than a permanent move. Either way, the same free period usually applies as it would at home, and the aim is the same: to get your relative back to managing as independently as they can.

Ask the discharge team directly why more time is being suggested, what it is expected to achieve, and roughly how long it is likely to last. If your relative or you are not comfortable with the suggestion, you do not have to accept it without discussion; the section below on disagreeing with the plan covers what to do next. Post-operative rehabilitation and convalescent care covers what a longer recovery, wherever it happens, tends to involve.

Raise it with the ward first, as early as you can, because a discharge that has not yet happened is far easier to pause than one to unpick afterwards. If that conversation does not resolve it, every hospital has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service, known as PALS, which is free and can raise a concern quickly on your behalf while your relative is still on the ward. You can find your hospital's PALS service through the NHS website.

If PALS does not settle it, or the issue is more serious, you can make a formal complaint. The NHS's guidance on how to complain sets out how, and free, independent NHS complaints advocacy is available in every area to help you put a complaint together; your local council or Healthwatch can tell you who provides it locally. None of this needs to be adversarial. Hospitals discharge a huge number of patients every day, and a clear, early question is usually enough to fix a plan that has missed something, rather than a complaint after the event. For wider advice and a printable checklist covering the same ground as this page, Carers UK's guide to coming out of hospital is worth reading alongside it.