Claim: Over 6,000 elderly people a month are kept in hospital beds in England when they are fit to discharge and it costs the NHS £6 billion a year.
Fact-check: No source yet for £6bn cost of 'bed blocking' claim - Full Fact
Verdict: 6,000 was the number of people of all ages fit to discharge and still in hospital on one day in june. there were over 170,000 delayed bed days over the month, these are the number of full days each bed could have been used by another patient. the estimates for how much this costs vary, but none seem to be higher than £900 million a year.
Organisation: Full Fact
Author: Claire Milne
Date published: 2016-08-12T00:00:00