Home care is way to tackle the NHS crisis

AS the winter deepens, so does pressure on the NHS continue to increase with ever more patients seeking treatment both in doctor’s surgeries and on hospital wards.

Increasing life span, coupled with a growing population and an underfunded health service is all creating the perfect storm, with gloom merchants predicting collapse of our health system as overworked staff quit for less demanding jobs.

It’s not a pretty picture and yet so much more could be achieved if a little commercial sense was injected into the system.

By way of illustration, official statistics reveal it currently costs £3,000 a week to maintain a patient in a hospital bed.

However, if money could be diverted into home care, let us say £500 per patient per week, this would result in enormous savings and more importantly, make available expensive hospital beds for needy, sick patients.

As I move deeper into old age, I have decided that, if possible, I wish to end my days at home, in familiar surroundings, surrounded by my toys, able to enjoy a comfortable standard of living with a little care.

Hospital bed blocking is a major problem as patients that no longer need nursing care are unable to go home because there is no money available to provide assistance.

To me, it seems the height of stupidity not to move funds around to attack this problem. Care home beds cost between £750 and £1,500 a week, yet councils can only offer just over £500, one of the reasons why so many homes, struggling with the consequences of the ever-increasing minimum wage, coupled with rising costs of red tape, are refusing council contracts, closing their doors and selling their premises for development.

I very much believe in our NHS but it is currently overworked, with government saying more money is being provided but demanding efficiency savings.

What is required is successful hard-headed business people to be given the opportunity to take radical decisions in the interests, not only of the patient, but also of the exchequer. That would get results, providing the Establishment and politicians were banned from meddling. Russell Luckock is chairman of Birmingham pressings firm AE Harris