Discharge Officer

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Discharge Officer

The closing date is 26 February 2026

To be responsible for discharge planning from the point of admission ensuring that discharges are expedited in a timely manner maximizing the use of hospital beds and reducing length of stay.

To work with the discharge team and multi disciplinary teams to ensure patients, relatives & health professionals both inside and outside the trust are all working together to achieve the same goal of safe and seamless discharge.

To liaise daily with medical staff & ward managers to review all patients supporting and facilitating discharge decisions and progress chasing any outstanding diagnostics and reviews.

To progress chase patients through their whole hospital journey and ensure patient's, relatives and colleagues are kept up to date with progress and delays.

Main duties of the job

To identify problems in relation to discharge process and initiate actions to resolve them in order to facilitate safe and efficient discharge.

Throughout the shift ensure that beds are used efficiently and appropriately, maximising the use of the departure lounge to support the emergency 4 hour target.

To liaise with the discharge planning team to ensure patients with complex needs have adequate community care packages in place to meet their individual needs.

To organise and coordinate with patients, relatives and various outside agencies the requirements of patients with complex discharge needs.

To report daily and escalated information relating to any delayed discharges and regularly review actions being taken to address the delays.

To progress chase each patient throughtheir hospital stay ensuring diagnostics and results are delivered and reviewed in a timely manner.

Communicate with nursing & medical colleagues ensuring all staff

About us

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides hospital services to a growing population of around 700,000 people living across Bedfordshire and the surrounding areas across two busy hospital sites in Bedford and Luton. Both hospital sites offer key services such as A&E, Obstetrics-led Maternity and Paediatrics. You will be joining a friendly, high performing Trust committed to ensuring the health and wellbeing of staff. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in our region you will have access to a programme of high quality training and development to help you grow your career. The Trust continues to be committed to delivering the best patient care using the best clinical knowledge and technology available.

Our values

We not only recruit based on qualifications and experience - we recruit individuals who demonstrate the behaviours which underpin our Trusts core values. We achieve this by using values based recruitment. We are dedicated to making our recruitment practices as inclusive as possible for everyone, we are committed to promoting equality and diversity, and creating a culture that values differences.

Please note that vacancies may close prior to the advertised closing date when sufficient number of applications have been received. All new staff will be subject to a probationary period covering first 6 months in post. Travel between hospital sites may be required. Please review all documents attached to ensure you familiarise yourself with all requirements of the job

Job responsibilities

To be responsible for coordinating discharge plans for defined groups of patients from the point of admission. Ensuring that discharges are completed in an efficient way in line with expected timeframes to contribute to reducing length of stay for the benefit of the patient and the Trust.

To be a key point of contact and liaise between the patient, their family / carer, the discharge team, the Multi-disciplinary team (MDT) and external partners.

To proactively address actions required to support discharge ensuring excellent communication with all stakeholders to promote efficient safe and timely discharge.

To identify barriers to discharge plans and work proactively to address these with the MDT and escalating appropriately when additional support is required.

To keep digital systems up to date ensuring data is submitted in a timely manner and patient information is accurate.

Primarily working with patients on complex discharge pathways and have identified needs to support a safe discharge across various ward areas and directorates

Facilitate discharges in line with Discharge Ready Dates (DRD) monitoring progress against these timescales, reporting and escalating when there is a slippage against the target date

Work pro-actively to identify barriers and initiate early actions to address these

To ensure the MDT, including partner organisations, as well as the patient and their family / carer are updated in regards to discharge plans

Liaise with the MDT to ensure all referrals are done efficiently and accurately to progress the discharge plan

Where appropriate attend MDT case reviews to gather relevant information to use for progressing the discharge plans

Where delays are identified use negotiation and assertiveness to ensure stakeholders know the importance of their timely completion of tasks to ensure the DRD is achieved

Optimise use of various agencies to provide on-going support for patients

Take an active role in the daily board rounds ensuring information sharing and understanding of key tasks required in order to progress timely discharges

Provide support in sharing resources and information on services appropriate to discharge, for example, social services, rehabilitation services, district nurses etc.

Person Specification Qualifications

• Educated to Level 3, A Level, BTEC, NVQ or equivalent

Experience

• Experience of working with the general public
• Experience of working in a team
• Experience of working under pressure
• Experience of organising and prioritising workload
• NHS experience
• Experience in Hospital computer systems

Knowledge

• Sound information of information governance
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications
• Knowledge of Adult safeguarding
• Awareness of equality and diversity requirements
• Knowledge of patient flow and bed management

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust