Figures show more than 14,000 NHS hospital beds are occupied every day by patients who have recovered enough to be discharged, and experts are urging ministers to respond to the crisis.
The data emerged amid a scathing report which revealed almost a fifth of care providers are waiting weeks to transfer those they care for.
The survey of 568 care homes and home care providers across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland found wide regional variation, with a lack of agreement on how social care should be paid for, cited as the most common reason for delays in admission to a care provider.
They also say incorrect or incomplete information provided by NHS hospital staff, poor communication, the length of time patients have to wait for their treatment to be assessed and a lack of transport options are also contributing to delays in patients being discharged from hospital.
Seventeen percent of respondents said the average time between a patient being discharged from the hospital and being under their care was one to two weeks, while 7% said it was three weeks or more.
The East of England performed best when it came to discharge from hospital, with 96% of patients admitted to a healthcare facility within a week.
Half of hospitals surveyed in Scotland said it took more than a week for patients to be discharged, while 15% in the West Midlands and 10% in Yorkshire and the Humber said it took more than three weeks to keep a patient in hospital.
Autumnna, the care directory service which carried out the survey, said the sample sizes from Wales and Northern Ireland were too small to provide reliable regional findings.
The latest data from NHS England shows that in July, on average 12,326 hospital patients per day were medically fit and ready to be discharged and transferred to a range of facilities, but were not.
The latest NHS data for Scotland shows that the number of beds occupied each day by patients due to be discharged averaged 1,983 in June, up from 1,942 in May and the highest ever recorded.
Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said the report outlined a “dysfunctional” system which “will get worse unless corrective action is taken”.
He added: “Providers are frustrated and angry about the lack of a clear, strategic approach to discharge and the fact that no one is providing a national perspective.”
“We hear about bottlenecks in hospitals all the time, but the root cause is a lack of a clear, strategic approach to discharging patients appropriately.”
He added that pressures on the NHS were often self-inflicted and symptom of a system “obsessed” with processes that have “forgotten” that patients should come first.
Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group, which represents social care providers in Yorkshire, said the report was the latest in a long series of reports that paint a “bleak and unacceptable” picture.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “We need to reform our system so people can get the care they need, when and where they need it.”
Autumnna founder Debbie Harris said the findings were a “wake-up call” to Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting that the system was broken and urgent reform was needed.
“As our population ages, the pressures are only going to get worse, so we need to fix this now before the system completely collapses,” she said.
The NHS said it recognised the number of delayed discharges was “unacceptable” and was working to improve the system.
He said the government was committed to reforming the social care sector and creating a national care service, but did not say when this would happen.
