Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Blue Sky Offices Shoreham, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5FF, UNITED KINGDOM
Tel: +44 (0)1273 434 943
Email: [email protected]
The NHS Confederation is urging the government to release £500 million of social care funding which was announced more than a month ago.
Until this funding is released, the NHS is unable to put contracts in place with social care providers, which is preventing patients who are medically fit to be discharged into the community.
Keeping these patients in hospital unnecessarily is not only “detrimental” to patients’ health, but it is also “a really inefficient use of finite and very stretched NHS resource”, according to the Confederation.
Average hospital bed occupancy currently stands at 97%
The NHS Confederation is blaming the ‘Westminster chaos’ for the delay, and says the new secretary of state for health and social care now needs to “cut through this blockage” if we are to avoid a winter crisis.
Health leaders are concerned that the longer these delays continue, the less local services will be able to put this investment to good use.
While demand for emergency care services is not expected to reach its peak until January, the average hospital bed occupancy currently stands at 97%, performance against the four-hour A&E target continues to fall, and ‘category 1’ ambulance call outs were a fifth higher in September than before the pandemic.
This is against the backdrop of 132,000 vacancies across the NHS, 165,000 vacancies across social care, and over 7 million people on the waiting list for elective treatment.
“Unbelievable” that the funding hasn’t been released so close to winter
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said it is “unbelievable” that this funding hasn’t yet been released when we are so close to winter.
“Vital public services and the communities they serve are currently paying the price of this political chaos,” he added.
He explains that the funding is needed urgently for three reasons. “Firstly, because it will get people who are medically fit out of hospital at pace so that they can recover at home and not deteriorate further.
“Secondly, it is needed to help the NHS become even more productive as hospitals beds occupied by patients who should not be there then lead to waits in emergency departments worsening, more ambulances queuing up outside of hospitals, elective procedures having to be cancelled, and primary care getting more overwhelmed by people’s health deteriorating in the community.
“Thirdly, it is needed as a way of hopefully increasing the pay of some of the poorest in our communities in domiciliary care to undertake a vital service at a time when they will be needed more than ever.”
He urges the government to act now and immediate release the social care discharge fund. Without this, the likelihood of the NHS facing a winter is “extremely high”.