IN MY VIEW ... We must improve the care we give older patients

WHEN it comes to the care of older people, it’s clear that the NHS is stumbling badly. I see or hear evidence of this daily — most recently I was told about a woman in her 70s found dead after a neighbour noticed her curtains remained closed for days.

There was no record of her having seen a doctor for years, so a post-mortem examination was mandatory. This revealed she’d likely had a heart attack.

She died alone without support or care. If she had experienced symptoms and sought medical attention, her death probably could have been prevented. But she was on the autistic spectrum and in the past had been confused and frightened by the complexity of her GP’s recorded phone system, so she had given up trying to call.

You might wonder why friends didn’t help but, if any had called on her behalf, it’s likely they would have been told they didn’t have the authority to do so, as indeed I was when calling a practice on behalf of my 93-year-old neighbour after recognising she had heart failure. I was told my only option was to register online as her carer, which I tried to do, only to be informed that, due to Covid, the website was not operational. I’ve written to the GP and practice nurse but had no reply — a patient in heart failure all but abandoned.

Finally, my mother, 91, frail and diabetic, was told by text to go for a blood test at the local hospital, only to find out later that it was closed for blood tests and that she needed to go to a hospital in central London, more than ten miles away.

This is the status of primary healthcare in the NHS for a big part of our community.