As reported a few days ago, older patients in the UK have been found to be taking up bed space longer than the NHS feels is profitable for them to do so. In lieu of keeping these elderly patients in NHS hospitals longer, government has created a fund to get them moving out of the system quicker.
At the moment there is a £170 million fund intended to be shared amongst councils to provide improved support and care for seniors as they arrive home from hospital. Since the thinktank reported that keeping elderly patients in hospitals longer was going to interfere with meeting the £20 billion target for NHS savings, this fund was created to save money while providing a modicum of care for the elderly.
Of the total sum, £150 million will be shared between 152 councils who provide social care for the elderly with the other £20 million being provided to local funds for those facilities that deal with the disabled grants. This is aimed at enabling disabled persons to live at home which of course is cheaper than providing live-in facilities.
The £150 million is going to come from savings in the budget of the Department of Health while the £20 million will be provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Still, the objective is to pass elderly patients more quickly through hospitals in order to save money with the rationalisation that it will get them home to their families sooner.
The president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Peter Hay, states that funding will boost the ability to get elder patients home more quickly but is still insufficient to meet much deeper needs in solving the problem. Since older patients have greater needs when leaving hospitals, more money will be needed and this has ministers looking at ways to fund these needs without interfering with the NHS budget projections.
