28.01.16
Jump in number of over-90s sent to A&E by ambulance
The amount of very elderly people being sent to A&E by ambulance has skyrocketed by over 60% in the last five years, new figures published by the HSCIC have shown.
Last year, 325,086 people aged 90 and over were sent to an emergency department via ambulance, compared to 202,537 in 2009-10.
Labour’s shadow health secretary, Heidi Alexander MP, blamed the soaring figures on the government’s steep cuts to social care, now having a “direct knock-on effect” on the health service.
“It is nothing short of a scandal that thousands of frail elderly people are being rushed through towns by the ambulance service, only to be left in crowded A&E departments,” she said.
“The severe cuts we have seen to social care under the Tories have left too many older people without the support they need to remain independent in their own homes.”
Several expert bodies have been warning of a potential knock-on effect on the NHS as a result of care cuts for several months now, especially in the weeks preceding the government’s Spending Review.
Although the Spending Review did much to allay fears, including by creating a 2% social care levy and pouring £1.5bn into the Better Care Fund exclusively for council use, NHS England’s boss, Simon Stevens, said last month that care provision would continue to deteriorate.
He told the organisation’s board at the time: “The Forward View made the obvious point that the level of patient demand on the NHS is partly a function of the availability of social care, particularly for frail older people.
“The Spending Review makes some welcome moves to hypothecate new funding streams for social care, but the overall funding quantum nationally and the distributional effects across England still imply a widening gap between growing need and available services. If unaddressed, this would result in extra demand on GPs, community health services and hospitals over and above the FYFV NHS cost estimated.”
An NHS England spokesman partly agreed, telling the Guardian: “In hospitals up and down the country there are many older people ready to go home but delays in support packages, home-care adaptations, domiciliary support or finding a care home place means spending another night in hospital.”
But he blamed the growing figures on the country’s ageing population, the “main challenge” that the health service is now facing.
“The country needs a settled and durable new political consensus and this report is a positive contribution to that debate,” a spokesman said.