More spending on care in community
OVER the New Year period hospital doctors and others have been warning that the NHS is in crisis and patients are being let down, with long waiting times in A&E and people being left on trollies due to a lack of hospital beds.
There have been calls for an emergency injection of cash.
I agree of course that there should be more funding for the NHS. The question is - where should that funding go?
In September last year I wrote in this column about my concern about the lack of care to support people in the community.
Elderly and frail people are trapped in hospital beds because all too often there are no vacancies in care homes or a package of care in their own home can’t be found.
This causes huge distress to the patient and their family. And of course if there are no vacant beds in the hospital, patients needing admission are treated on trolleys in A&E at Stepping Hill.
In Stockport more has been spent historically on hospitals than on care at home and care homes – in spite of the fact that we have a higher than average elderly population in the borough.
It’s not surprising therefore that it has been very difficult for the A&E department at Stepping Hill over Christmas and New Year. Despite the efforts of the staff, who are working flat out, Stepping Hill is still falling well behind the four-hour waiting time target and staff have cancelled some outpatient appointments and re-scheduled planned operations.
We do need extra funding, but the majority of that funding must go to improving care at home and to increase care home places so that older people no longer needing medical care can be discharged from Stepping Hill. Then patients waiting for treatment can be admitted to hospital and the pressures on A&E eased.
We also need to look at the GP services, including the out-ofhours service, to see if there is more that can be done to offer people alternatives to going to A&E.
Extra funding needs to deal with the problems in the current system, not just prop it up until the next crisis.