10,000 dementia patients a year left on hospital wards

UP to 10,000 Alzheimer’s patients a year have been left on hospital wards despite being cleared for discharge.

Figures show the NHS has spent £15million a month to keep people in hospital because of a lack of social care beds.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said vulnerable patients could die if they are not discharged at the right time.

‘When you’re in hospital, you get a tray of food in front of you,’ he added. ‘People with dementia often don’t remember that they need to eat, so the tray of food will be taken away again half an hour later and the person with dementia won’t have eaten.

‘So sadly some people die in hospital when they’ve got dementia when they could have been living well in the community either in their own home or a care home.’

Sam Evans told ITV News, which obtained the figures, how her mother Dotti Harman, 87, had to spend an unnecessary extra two months in hospital after a battle with pneumonia. ‘As you’d leave she’d say: “Am I coming with you?” It’s heartwrenching,’ she said.

Urging the Government to tackle the social care crisis to allow elderly patients to be treated with dignity, she said her mother’s health deteriorated as a result of her prolonged stay. #

‘Her memory became worse, she became depressed, sad and withdrawn,’ she added. ‘ It’s upsetting to see this little lady in bed knowing she shouldn’t be there. They [the elderly] contributed to life in such a big way and are we looking after them well? No, I don’t think we are.

‘She’s always worked, paid her taxes and what does she get at the end of it? Unless you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, what do you get? Nothing.’ Last Christmas 1,400 patients who should have celebrated with their families had to spend it on wards.

The new data follows a report by Age UK that shows more than one in three dementia patients are denied individual treatment plans when they are discharged.

There are more than 850,000 dementia sufferers in the country, with Alzheimer’s disease the most common form. But research carried out by Oxford University and the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre suggested arthritis drugs could halve the risk of patients developing dementia.

Clinical signs of Alzheimer’s have been reversed by scientists, raising hopes of a treatment for the disease.

The US team at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio reduced a brain enzyme called BACE1 in Alzheimer’s-prone mice, which cleared them of a toxic protein building block, beta-amyloid, which is a key hallmark of the disease.

Lead scientist Dr Riqiang Yan said: ‘To our knowledge, this is the first observation of such a dramatic reversal of amyloid deposition in any study of Alzheimer’s disease mouse models.’