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This article in the Telegraph goes a long way in explaining the extra pressures on the NHS.
The growing NHS crisis has been fuelled by the closure of almost 1,000 care homes housing more than 30,000 pensioners, research suggests. It comes as NHS figures show the worst Accident & Emergency crisis on record, amid a 37 per cent rise in the numbers stuck in hospital for want of social care, since 2010. Experts said hospitals were being overwhelmed by the spread of flu because they had almost no spare capacity to cope with surges in demand. A report by industry analysts shows that in the last decade, 929 care homes housing 31,201 pensioners have closed, at a time when the population is ageing rapidly.
The research from LaingBuisson show care homes going out of business at an ever increasing rate, with 224 care homes closed between March 2016 and March 2017, amounting to more than 2,000 beds. Meanwhile, the NHS data shows the number of beds used by those who are medically fit for discharge has risen by 37 per cent in seven years. The figures show that last November, 155,059 NHS “bed days” were taken by those who should have been discharged - compared with 113, 091 in the same month in 2010. Charities last night accused successive Governments of a “total failure of leadership” in failing to tackle Britain’s social care crisis, which a series of prime ministers have promised to address.
They said cuts in council funding meant care home providers and those providing care at home were withdrawing from the market, because it was no longer profitable. Meanwhile, councils were funding less care, leaving incrasing numbers of elderly and vulnerable people to fend for themselves, and more likely to end up in hospital, they said. Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK said: "The fact that almost 1,000 care homes and 30,000 beds have gone in a decade at the same time as our population has been rapidly ageing demonstrates a total failure of leadership on the part of successive governments so far as social care is concerned.
