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NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 22nd May 2001
'WE CANNOT CARRY ON KIDDING OURSELVES ABOUT ELDERLY CARE'
WARNING TO ELECTION CANDIDATES
Election candidates throughout the United Kingdom are being warned that there is a crisis looming in elderly care which could drive a coach and horses through the current NHS plan to treat more patients more quickly.
The Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA), which represents over 1,000 homes, has written directly to the candidates of all the major political parties to appeal for their support in staving off what it foresees as a potential danger to thousands of elderly people in need of long-term nursing care.
If the gaping hole in social services departments' finances is not plugged within the next year, the RNHA says many sick elderly patients will get stuck in acute hospital beds for weeks on end because there are no nursing home places available to which they can be discharged for continuing nursing care.
This, says the RNHA, will be bad for the patients' health, because it exposes them to the risk of hospital acquired infections such as MRSA. It is also bad for the NHS, because it will not be able to meet its commitments to reduce waiting times for operations and trolley waits in accident and emergency departments.
Commented RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: "Unless drastic action is taken, what we shall be seeing within six months is a big rise in bed blocking, more cancelled operations and unacceptably long delays in getting patients from casualty departments up to hospital wards. There will also be more deaths of elderly patients who have picked up serious infections in hospital."
The solution, says the RNHA, is to put enough money in the kitty to prevent more closures of nursing homes, which provide long-stay care for seven times more elderly patients than the NHS. A 5.4% fall in the number of nursing home beds over the past year alone means that it will be increasingly difficult to find places for elderly patients at short notice, even if there is the money available.
But in many parts of the country, cash-strapped social services departments are cutting back furiously on their elderly care budgets, leaving the NHS to have to keep patients in hospital much longer than is necessary.
Added Mr Ursell: "Some social services departments are not even maintaining their overall funding at last year's levels. Children's services are being given priority and, as a result, the elderly are massively losing out. We have no quarrel with the need to fund children's care adequately. But a wealthy country like ours cannot and should not carry on kidding itself that older people can be looked after on the cheap.
"Whether we have a government of the left, right or centre in a few weeks' time, the stark reality is that elderly care services are drowning in a sea of under-funding, red tape and indifference. Right now, nursing homes are expected to provide 24-hour care for very sick people for the same amount of money as you would pay for an overnight stay in a budget hotel. It's unrealistic, unfair and uncivilised."
The RNHA is calling on all candidates, whether fighting the general or a local election, to visit a nursing home for themselves during the campaign to talk to patients, staff and carers. It hopes that politicians' first-hand experience of current problems facing the nursing home sector will bring home to them the need for radical action after the election.
Currently, the fees paid to registered nursing homes for most State-funded patients in registered nursing homes work out at less than £50 a day. Around a third of patients whose personal assets are above the threshold of £18,000 are not eligible for financial help from social services. They generally pay higher fees and, indirectly, are subsidising those paid for by social services.
The RNHA foresees accelerating closures of nursing homes over the two or three years unless the Government puts more resources into the system and unless social services departments are able to increase the level of fees they pay. If this does not happen, the current vicious circle could result in a loss of up to 25% of the nursing home beds that existed at the start of the millennium.
Ironically, the loss of beds could peak precisely at the moment when there is a significant rise in the number of over-85s in the population, one third of whom are likely to need nursing home care for complex and multiple health problems.
Across the United Kingdom, around 180,000 people are looked after in nursing homes, of whom 130,000 are elderly or physically disabled. A further 300,000 people, mainly elderly, are accommodated in residential care facilities. The welfare of both these groups is at risk from chronic under-funding, says the RNHA.
END
For further information please contact: Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, Registered Nursing Home Association (Tel: 0121-454 2511 or mobile 07785 227000)
Note to editors: A copy of the briefing sent to election candidates is attached.
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