Elderly care crisis is breaking the NHS

WHEN Britain’s top a&e doctor says he is desperate to keep his elderly parents out of hospital for fear they would never make it home again, the Government really must sit up and take notice.

In a chilling metaphor, Dr adrian Boyle, new president of the royal College of emergency Medicine, compares hospitals to ‘lobster traps’ for the old – easy to slip into but hard to escape from.

and they are often there only because there is no other safe place for them to go. On any given day more than 13,000 elderly patients are stranded on wards despite being medically fit to leave.

This chronic and growing bed-blocking scandal serves as a rebuke to every government over the past 30 years. From Blair onwards they have failed to grasp the nettle of social care.

The knock- on effects are grave and becoming graver. Patients waiting 12 hours and more to be admitted to a ward, or being held in ambulances because no beds are available. It is simply unacceptable.

So what does the current Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay propose to do about this existential threat to the NHS?

He claims to be taking ‘urgent action’ but his proposals – £500million to speed up hospital discharge, more 111 and 999 call handlers and a pledge to ‘create’ more beds – hardly inspire confidence.

What is needed is not tinkering round the edges but radical reform. More nursing home provision, better pay for carers (currently on pitifully low wages) and vastly improved support and allowances for those who need care in their own homes.

With Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said to be preparing a hair- shirt budget and the health and social care levy now scrapped, the Mail understands that funds are tight.

However, solving the care crisis would actually save the country money. It would ease the financial burden on the NHS, free up thousands of beds, cut waiting times and save lives.

Transformative change will not happen on its own. It will require political courage and a steely determination to succeed where others have failed.

But the Government has a moral duty to protect its most vulnerable – a duty it is currently failing miserably.

Dr Boyle says the elderly are suffering harm by being left to languish in hospitals. That is a truly shameful situation.