Inpatient facilities for people with LD are highly specialised services that are a valuable, but expensive, component of mental health services. Although there are no national data describing these services, commissioners need good quality data to inform their contracting and pricing strategies for LD psychiatric inpatient care. To help fill this information gap, we carried out a review to explore the general characteristic of inpatients population, duration of admission and delays in discharge in the inpatient LD unit.

To analyse admission trends including the reasons for delayed discharges to a LD unit from 2008 to 2011.

A retrospective review of the case records of all inpatient admissions to the LD Unit (Seacole) between 2008-2011.

There were 41 admissions made to the service in the time period from 2008 to 2011. More male patients (76%) were admitted compared to females (24%) (p=0.073). Male patients (55%) were more likely than female patients (20%) to be admitted from a residential home (p = 0.075).There was no statistically significant difference between the male and female sexes regarding diagnosis of challenging behaviour or psychotic or affective disorder. 59% of discharges in 2008–2011 were delayed. The main reason for the delayed discharge was social and was significantly more likely to result from difficulty in finding appropriate placement (p=0.008).

Social problems were the main cause of delayed discharges. Early identification of social issues, better utilization of community resources and robust discharge planning should be done to avoid delay in discharge.