BED blocking should never be dismissed as merely an administrative headache. It is a major problem that causes untold anguish and wastes precious health resources.

Elderly people are regularly stranded in hospital long after they should have been discharged because they have nowhere else to go.

Their distress at being homeless is compounded by the knowledge that they are an inconvenience to the health authority. It is hard to know a more effective way of stripping them of their dignity.

Theirs is not the only misery. When someone occupies a hospital bed they no longer need it delays the pain-relieving treatment of another patient. In an age when the smooth running of our hospitals relies on the speedy throughput of patients, bed blocking is a short cut to longer waiting lists.

The Evening Press has long argued that the problem has not been taken seriously enough. At the last minute, extra resources have been found to ease the worst effects of bed blocking. But the political will to find a long-term solution has not been apparent.

Bed blocking is not going to go away of its own accord. Only last Friday we reported how more than a fifth of North Yorkshire's population is over 60, and half are over 45. How to care for our increasing elderly community is one of the most pressing issues we face.

York was today acknowledged by the Department of Health as one of the country's bed-blocking "hotspots"; that unhappy situation can only deteriorate after yesterday's news that two city nursing homes are in crisis.

More Government cash will go some way to easing the immediate problem. The insistence that the council draws up three-year service agreements with care homes will also allow some much-needed forward planning.

That leaves ministers still to tackle the twin foundations of the problem - a lack of qualified care staff and the mass sell-off of care homes to property developers.

Updated: 10:47 Tuesday, October 09, 2001