For the last ten years, NHS staff have been working to meet the ever-rising demand of patients coming through the front door, but there is another pressure for them to confront. After they admit a patient to hospital and have treated them, how and when will they get them out again? Nationally every year, 330,000 patients are staying in hospital for more than 21 days. To the NHS, these people as known as ‘super-stranded’.

With NHS ‘bed blocking’ numbers at their highest level since 2017, for those who are medically fit to leave, multi-billion pound cuts to social and community care services have left a shortage of care-home beds, equipment, staff and housing, effectively stranding these patients in hospital. With a duty to oversee safe discharges, this leaves the NHS no choice but to keep these medically-fit patients in hospital.

In Liverpool’s Aintree University Hospital, 70-year-old vascular dementia patient John has been medically fit enough to leave the hospital for over two months. With 68-year-old wife Sandy, herself disabled, no longer able to care for him at home, John needs to go to a care home. This is something that Sandy, married to John for 52 years, is deeply upset about but feels she has no choice if John is to remain safe. With demand high for places, many residential units are reluctant to take on the more complicated patients, and John is stuck in limbo.

Whilst most patients stuck in hospital are over 65, it is not only the elderly who are affected. At Alder Hey, lively three-year-old Hari has a life-limiting and rare genetic disease called X-linked myotubular myopathy, which causes severe muscle weakness. His condition limits his ability to move and prevents him from eating or breathing without assistance. But after being fitted with a tracheostomy to help him breathe, he has been well enough to go home for the last eight months. With a national shortage of accessible housing, his local Welsh council have had to take the extraordinary decision to build Hari a house. Only once he has accessible and safe housing can Alder Hey train a team of carers, who will be able to support Hari’s parents with his complex care. By the predicted house completion date in August 2020, Hari’s care at Alder Hey will have cost the NHS an estimated half a million pounds.

Hari has options, possibly helped by his age, but in the Royal, there are no such plans for 46-year-old double amputee Brian. An accountant for 25 years, diabetes complications have meant that both of his legs had to be amputated and his sudden disability has left Brian at rock bottom. The home he shared with his father is no longer suitable given his wheelchair use, and so not only is he no longer able care for his elderly father, but he faces the very real prospect of being homeless.

So far, Brian has spent five weeks in hospital medically fit and waiting for discharge. However, there are only four temporary disabled access beds in all of Liverpool and they are all occupied. If Brian wishes to leave hospital, he must now contemplate moving into a care home for the elderly or risk being stuck in a bed that is desperately needed by a hospital struggling to meet demand.

Shown from multiple perspectives, audiences witness complexities of the dilemmas and decision-making, which happen every day for physicians, surgeons and managers and the impact these decisions have on patients.

Against the backdrop of historic demands stemming from limited resources, increasing patient numbers and social care at full stretch, the series will show the extraordinary work of some of Liverpool’s 20, 000 NHS hospital staff as they push the boundaries of what is possible with world class, cutting edge treatments and life-saving operations.

Hospital is a co-production with the Open University. Show less