A NURSING home may have to be built on the car park at health authority headquarters in Basingstoke as part of a new plan to solve the hospital bed-blocking crisis.

Last week, The Gazette reported how Basingstoke hospital has the highest level of such delayed discharges in its history - 64.

Bosses said the number is affecting their ability to treat the big influx of patients with winter illnesses.

The new report by management consultants recommends that less people in future be sent to nursing and residential homes.

It says that, instead, more flexible and collaborative forms of care provision should be established.

It recommends managers consider extending the three county council residential homes, including the one in Basingstoke, to provide nursing home places.

And it says sites like the car park at Harness House - the health authority's own Basingstoke headquarters - should be considered for an independent operator to use, in return for providing a fixed number of places.

The report calls for a review of the Hampshire payment rate for home places and says dual registration should be considered for homes to bring less disruption as clients grow more dependent.

It also says care homeowners should be offered more flexible contracts along with special payments, loans and shared training.

Worried health chiefs commissioned the plan in the latter part of last year.

Gareth Cruddace, health authority chief executive, said: "This is the single most significant issue facing this health community, so a huge amount of work has gone in jointly with social services."

He welcomed the £5.16 million which the Government has agreed to hand over to tackle the problem in the coming year. But he said the report showed that lack of affordable places was now the biggest cause of delayed discharges.

The report points to the closure of 130 nursing and residential home beds this year alone in the health authority area.

He said more detailed proposals would be revealed next month and added he is confident the bed-blocking problem will be resolved "in the medium term".