The pledge by Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, comes after a survey of 100 trusts in England found that 239,233 patients were discharged from wards between 11pm and 6am last year.
The findings, revealed after the Times sent freedom of information requests to all 170 NHS hospital trusts across the country, would add up to more than 400,000 such discharges every year – nearly 8,000 a week – if the other trusts that did not respond were discharging patients at similar rates.
The paper said this accounts for 3.5% of all hospital discharges, a rate that has remained constant for the past five years. But it found there were wide disparities between trusts, with Derby Hospitals Foundation Trust sending 8.7% of its patients home overnight in 2011-12, while others, including Newcastle Hospitals, recording overnight discharge rates under 1% last year.
Keogh said: "I am concerned to hear that some patients may be being discharged unnecessarily late. Patients should only be discharged when it's clinically appropriate, safe and convenient for them and their families. It is simply not fair to be sending people home late at night. We will look at this."
Hospital managers told the paper that discharging patients late at night could be used as a surreptitious way of freeing beds, but was often not in the best interests of patients.
The Patients Association warned that older patients were often the worst affected by the practice because they were sent home to cope on their own, without support in place. The organisation also warned the paper that overnight discharges could rise as NHS budgets are cut.
