NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 14th February 2003
THREE WARNINGS IN THREE MONTHS ABOUT
CARE CRISIS - GOVERNMENT ACCUSED OF TURNING
A DEAF EAR
The Government was accused today of simply not listening to the warnings - from sources as independent as the National Audit Office, Which? magazine and the King’s Fund - about the dire state of the UK’s care home sector.
Three times in three months the failings of the care system have been highlighted but little or nothing is being done about it, claims the Registered Nursing Home Association, the major national body representing independent sector nursing homes.
Reacting today to the latest report by the National Audit Office on the continuing saga of delayed hospital discharges of older people, the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA) said it seemed that the Government’s pre-occupation with foreign affairs had left it with a deaf ear to major social problems at home.
The association has welcomed the NAO’s recommendation that private sector homes should be more involved by NHS Trusts and Primary Care Trusts in the planning and development of older people’s services.
However, it warns that previous promises by the Government to promote greater partnership working between the public and private sectors have rarely been translated into meaningful action at a local level.
Said RNHA chief executive Frank Ursell: “The NAO tells us that at any point in time there are over 4,000 older people who could have been discharged from NHS acute hospitals if there had been somewhere suitable for them to go. Of these, around a third are stuck in a ward for a month or more longer than they should have been. Yet at the same time, hundreds of nursing homes have been forced to close because they just couldn’t get enough patients referred to them at an economic rate by social services and the NHS. Partnership working between the different sectors is a myth.”
He added: “The NAO is certainly not alone in highlighting our dysfunctional care system. Only a few weeks ago, Which? magazine revealed a number of disturbing cases of very elderly and vulnerable people having to wait an unacceptably long time to be placed in a care home. As the magazine rightly pointed out, care home beds are disappearing far faster than new ones are being created. Therein lie the seeds of a future crisis in the system, given that even the Government acknowledges that the demand for long-term residential care will increase significantly over the next ten to twenty years.”
The RNHA says its fears about the future stability of the independent care sector were reinforced by a report at the end of last year from the prestigious King’s Fund, which pointed to a staffing crisis looming in care homes as owners and managers struggle to keep employees who can get better wages in other parts of the economy.
“Again, this is a message we in the nursing home sector have been trying time and time again to get through to Ministers,” said Mr Ursell. “But it’s not something they want to hear. The King’s Fund has got it right. There needs to be a radical review of the way the long-term care sector is funded. If nothing changes, nursing and residential care homes are set to become casualties in a war of neglect. Too little money is paid in whilst too much is expected from the sector. We are at breaking point.”
The RNHA will continue to press the Government to increase resources for the nursing home sector each year at no less a rate than for the NHS. “We are all part of an inter-dependent system,” said Mr Ursell. “But we are treated as though we were completely separate entities.”
He concluded: “At a national level, the debate is about policies and principles. But this masks the human cost of inaction by politicians and decision-makers responsible for funding services. Only this week we have witnessed the tragedy of 88-year old Violet Townsend from Gloucester, who died five days after being transferred from the nursing home where she had lived very happily for eight years to another home whose fees were £60 a week less. Care of older people should be based on need, not on how to save money.
“Within the past month we have also heard of a record-breaking 88-hour wait by a patient on a trolley in a hospital accident and emergency department. All these issues are inter-connected. They are symptoms of the breakdown of our care system.”
END
For further information and comment, please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, Registered Nursing Home Association
Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile
Note to editors:
The three reports referred to in the news release are:
1. Ensuring the Effective Discharge of Older Patients from NHS Acute Hospitals,
a report from the National Audit Office published on 12th February 2003
2. Care Home Crisis, published by Which? in February 2003
3. Unfinished Business. Is a Crisis in Care Still Looming?, a report from the
King’s Fund published in November 2002
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