£5bn spent on f lawed NHS plan to treat OAPs at home
HEALTH bosses spent more than £5billion on a failed scheme to keep elderly patients out of hospital, a scathing report warns today. The Better Care Fund was launched in 2015 to try to save the NHS money by ensuring patients with long- term conditions were treated properly at home.
This was meant to reduce the numbers who were admitted to A&E and ensure that if they did end up in hospital, they were discharged very quickly.
But a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that the numbers of emergency admissions involving these patients actually went up by 87,000 from 2014/15 to 2015/16.
Similarly, the number of bed-blocking incidents, where patients have to stay in hospital because there is nowhere else to care for them, also rose over the same period, costing the NHS an extra £311million.
This meant the Health Service spent vast amounts of money looking after
‘Nothing but a pipe dream’
these patients in hospital even though it had already invested £5.3billion trying to treat them at home.
The spending watchdog said there was ‘no compelling evidence’ the plans were ever going to work, and MPs described them as ‘flawed’ and a ‘pipe dream’.
The report added: ‘The Fund has not achieved the expected value for money, in terms of savings, outcomes for patients or reduced hospital activity, from the £5.3billion spent through the Fund in 2015/16.’
Under the Better Care Fund, councils and NHS trusts were given additional money to reduce the numbers of over65s going to hospital. Some areas recruited additional nurses or care workers to help look after the elderly at home, to prevent their health deteriorating.
Ministers said they wanted councils, hospitals and GPs to work more closely together and to share expertise.
The Fund was meant to save £511million a year, but today’s report concludes that it actually cost taxpayers an extra £457million. This included £311million on emergency admissions to hospital and £146 million on bed-blockinggo said:far effort. Amyas home.short‘So It Morse,far, of will plans, benefits patientsbe head importantdespiteof have unablethe muchfallenNAO,to to learnsuch plansfrom the when over-optimism implementingof the much larger NHS sustainability and transformation plans.’ Labour MP Meg Hillier, chairman of the public accounts committee, said MPs had warned of flaws in the Fund two years ago. ‘The committee warned that the focus on reducing emergency admissions to hospital without enough investment in community- based services would increase pressure on adult social care services,’ she said.
‘In fact, the number of emergency admissions continues to increase, as does the number of people unable to leave hospital when they are ready to; increasingly because they need homecare or a place in a care home, which are simply unavailable.’
She said plans to roll out the Fund even more widely by 2020 were ‘nothing but a pipe dream’.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Better Care Fund is just one element of this Government’s programme to integrate health and social care for the first time – and as the report recognises, it has already incentivised local areas to work together better, with nine out of ten places saying their plans are improving services for patients. We will build on this for the future.’