"bed blocker" meaning in English

See bed blocker in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-bed blocker.ogg [Australia] Forms: bed blockers [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} bed blocker (plural bed blockers)
  1. (chiefly UK, idiomatic, derogatory, medicine, public policy) An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities. Tags: UK, derogatory, idiomatic Categories (topical): Medicine Synonyms: bed-blocker, bedblocker Related terms: bed blocking
    Sense id: en-bed_blocker-en-noun-Oh30TASq Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header Topics: medicine, sciences

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for bed blocker meaning in English (3.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bed blockers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bed blocker (plural bed blockers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Medicine",
          "orig": "en:Medicine",
          "parents": [
            "Biology",
            "Sciences",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2006 March 7, Jacqueline Maley, “Court evicts NHS 'bed blocker'”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "A 72-year-old \"bed blocker\" was yesterday ordered to vacate the hospital bed he has refused to leave for three years, despite being in good health.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 October 10, Eilish O'Regan, “Plan aims to ease cost of nursing home care”, in Irish Independent, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "There will also be a fee charged to a \"bed blocker\"—someone fit for discharge from an acute hospital but reluctant to go until a nursing home place is provided.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 February 21, “Ontario woman on crusade to demand hospital accountability”, in Global News Toronto, Canada, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "Dimitra was slapped with a hospital bill worth $18,238, for taking up an acute car bed for too long. . . . \"Maria's mother was desperately ill and needed hospital care and she was treated like a bed blocker.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities."
      ],
      "id": "en-bed_blocker-en-noun-Oh30TASq",
      "links": [
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        [
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "hospitalize",
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        ],
        [
          "infirm",
          "infirm"
        ],
        [
          "necessitate",
          "necessitate"
        ],
        [
          "hospitalization",
          "hospitalization"
        ],
        [
          "prolong",
          "prolong"
        ],
        [
          "placement",
          "placement"
        ],
        [
          "nursing home",
          "nursing home"
        ],
        [
          "long-term",
          "long-term"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "public policy",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK, idiomatic, derogatory, medicine, public policy) An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "bed blocking"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "bed-blocker"
        },
        {
          "word": "bedblocker"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "derogatory",
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "medicine",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-bed blocker.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/01/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bed blocker"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bed blockers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bed blocker (plural bed blockers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "bed blocking"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Medicine"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2006 March 7, Jacqueline Maley, “Court evicts NHS 'bed blocker'”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "A 72-year-old \"bed blocker\" was yesterday ordered to vacate the hospital bed he has refused to leave for three years, despite being in good health.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 October 10, Eilish O'Regan, “Plan aims to ease cost of nursing home care”, in Irish Independent, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "There will also be a fee charged to a \"bed blocker\"—someone fit for discharge from an acute hospital but reluctant to go until a nursing home place is provided.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 February 21, “Ontario woman on crusade to demand hospital accountability”, in Global News Toronto, Canada, retrieved 2012-12-02",
          "text": "Dimitra was slapped with a hospital bill worth $18,238, for taking up an acute car bed for too long. . . . \"Maria's mother was desperately ill and needed hospital care and she was treated like a bed blocker.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
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        ],
        [
          "medicine",
          "medicine"
        ],
        [
          "elderly",
          "elderly"
        ],
        [
          "hospitalize",
          "hospitalize"
        ],
        [
          "infirm",
          "infirm"
        ],
        [
          "necessitate",
          "necessitate"
        ],
        [
          "hospitalization",
          "hospitalization"
        ],
        [
          "prolong",
          "prolong"
        ],
        [
          "placement",
          "placement"
        ],
        [
          "nursing home",
          "nursing home"
        ],
        [
          "long-term",
          "long-term"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "public policy",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK, idiomatic, derogatory, medicine, public policy) An elderly hospitalized person who is too infirm to return home but not sufficiently ill to necessitate continued hospitalization, creating a situation in which his or her hospital stay is prolonged while authorities or relatives search for a suitable placement amid the scarce resources of nursing homes or other long-term care facilities."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "derogatory",
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "medicine",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-bed blocker.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/01/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/En-au-bed_blocker.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "bed-blocker"
    },
    {
      "word": "bedblocker"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bed blocker"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.