Up to 8,000 people die every year because of bed-blocking on NHS wards, experts claim.
The toll is the result of so-called delayed discharges, in which there are no beds for those who need surgery because patients who have been treated and are medically fit to go home cannot leave hospital.
This leads to the cancellation of operations, which may not be rescheduled for weeks. Research by experts at the universities of Oxford, Liverpool, York and Glasgow suggests this may lead to thousands of deaths.
Using NHS figures from August 2010 to March 2016, the team found that when delayed discharges rose sharply between 2014 and 2015 the number of deaths in the wider population soared as well.
