Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 23 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what information it has regarding the number of homeless people who are hospitalised each year and who are subsequently discharged, including their average length of stay, and what support is provided to them on discharge, including with (a) improving their welfare, (b) finding accommodation, (c) finding employment, (d) accessing education, (e) accessing drug, alcohol and/or other recovery services, (f) accessing NHS services and (g) improving their health outcomes.
The number of discharges from Scottish acute inpatient hospitals is presented in the following table. These figures do not include mental health facilities. These discharge figures have been produced using the Public Health Scotland SMR01 dataset which does not hold details of support provided on discharge.
Details of discharges from Scottish acute hospitals where the patient was recorded as having no fixed abode at hospital admission.
Financial Year | Count of discharges | Average Length of Stay (days) | Median Length of Stay (days) |
2014-2015 | 237 | 4.2 | 1 |
2015-2016 | 296 | 3.5 | 1 |
2016-2017 | 312 | 4.5 | 1 |
2017-2018 | 347 | 4.7 | 1 |
2018-2019 | 206 | 5 | 1 |
2019-2020 | 230 | 6.1 | 1 |
2020-2021 | 183 | 2.4 | 1 |
2021-2022 | 103 | 3.4 | 1 |
2022-2023 | 62 | 3.6 | 1 |
2023-2024 | 91 | 12.8 | 1 |
*Note: The average length of stay for the period 2023/24 is affected by the presence of a small number of stays with long lengths of stays.