When Is NHS Bedblocking Dealt With, And When Isn't It?

 

This is Jessie, to whom the organisation people clapped on their doorsteps for showed no mercy, despite it not being her wish to bedblock:

"I feel very angry, upset, worthless, and like my mental health and my life does not matter," says Jessie, propped up in a hospital bed.

She is recording this in a video diary. Blue NHS curtains are drawn around the bed and all her possessions are stacked up in the tiny chaotic space this creates. Among the piles of boxes and bags sit the dolls she holds to keep her calm.

Thirty-five-year-old Jessie spent 550 days in Northampton General Hospital. For nearly all that time, she was medically fit to leave but finding her a suitable place to go to was difficult.

The BBC has followed her story for more than five months as the NHS trust took costly High Court action against her, to have her evicted from the hospital bed she was occupying. 

Meanwhile, in London, action is not taken in five months, no, not even in thrice that number: 

Ruth, you see, is not a patient. Not really. A patient is someone who needs nursing care or medical treatment.

Ruth and Mimi, who’d been living in Grimsby before coming to London, claimed they were homeless and had nowhere to go. Hospitals can obtain possession orders to evict patients from a bed, but the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Barnet, has chosen not to issue legal proceedings.

So what's the difference, Reader? It surely can't be the most obvious thing, can it?