Nurse-led discharge unit helps to free up hospital beds

A redesigned nurse-led discharge unit has been freeing up much needed hospital beds and improving patient flow across St Thomas’ Hospital.

It can take a few hours to prepare for a patient to leave, so the discharge unit is a space for those inpatients who are ‘fit to sit’ to wait comfortably for the things they need, for example medicines, medical equipment, a discharge letter and transport home. 

Between January and December 2025, the nurse-led unit helped to discharge 5,159 patients – this was 83% more compared to the 2,821 patients discharged during the same period in 2024. 

Previously called the ‘discharge lounge’, the service included a mixture of inpatients, outpatients and those waiting for patient transport. To identify why the lounge was underutilised, Guy’s and St Thomas’ set up a task group made up of staff from a range of roles and departments. Their aim was to understand what was contributing to delays in patient flow across elective and emergency admissions, as well as for those patients who no longer needed critical care but required a bed on a ward.

Jessica Dang, discharge unit manager, said: “The relaunch of the discharge unit has significantly improved patient flow around the hospital with beds becoming available much earlier in the day. The task group interventions included separating the unit from the outpatient transport hub, upgrading infrastructure, refining inclusion and exclusion criteria, and developing a data dashboard to monitor utilisation.”

The discharge unit is part of a wider programme at Guy’s and St Thomas’ to improve patient care and ensure that resources are used in the best way possible to support all those who need hospital care. 

Chief Nurse Avey Bhatia said: “Helping our patients leave hospital as soon as their treatment is complete is really important. It’s not only better for patients’ recovery, it also means we can use the bed to care for other people who urgently need our services. 

“At any one time we have more than 100 patients who are medically fit to leave hospital but are still in our beds. This affects our ability to admit people from our emergency department or after planned procedures.”