The perilous state of social care is adding to the pressures on ambulance waiting times and on hospital beds, says DAUK’s chair.\r\n\r\nMs Helen Fernandes says the lack of investment in social care was causing blockages throughout the NHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Fernandes said: \u201cPatients wait in ambulances because there are no spaces in emergency departments.\r\n\r\n\u201cOnce they\u2019re in an emergency department, often there\u2019s a trolley wait for hours and hours for them to be assessed.\r\n\r\n\u201cAfter being assessed, and if they need in-hospital treatment, there\u2019s a long wait for a hospital bed.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne thing that could unlock a lot of these issues is sorting out social care.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s where patients can go when they\u2019re medically fit for discharge rather than waiting in a hospital bed for care in the community to be organised for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlso, because there is poor care in the community, people reach a crisis point.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen they\u2019re in a crisis they phone 999 and end up back in the emergency department.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s an awful cycle that just keeps churning. It has been going on for years.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe was commenting after new NHS figures showed emergency departments experienced their second highest level of attendances on record.\r\n\r\nThere were 2.39 million attendances at A&Es across England in March. Three-quarters (75%) of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged from A&E departments within four hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
March was also the busiest ever for ambulance incidents, NHS England figures<\/a> show.\r\n\r\nDespite that category 1 ambulance response times were the fastest since May 2021. The response for category 2 ambulance calls was almost three months quicker than February. It was more than five minutes quicker than March 2024, NHS England said.\r\n\r\nThe figures show a welcome improvement. And Ms Fernandes urged the Government to invest in social care to further ease many of the pressures on the NHS.\r\n\r\nShe said: \u201cOne of the cheapest ways of looking after people is in the community in their own home with a care package. Not in a hospital bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf the Government wants to save money they need to look at that.\u201d\r\n\r\nMs Fernandes told BBC Radio listeners about the experience of her aunt, who has dementia but has a full-time carer at home.\r\n\r\nSpeaking on BBC Radio Humberside, she described how her aunt was medically well but could not be discharged from hospital until she had been assessed by social services as safe to go home.\r\n\r\nMs Fernandes said: \u201cThe hospital she was in had three social workers all working flat out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t have intervened with her very helpful medical team, my aunt would\u2019ve been there even longer than the 10 days she was waiting for this assessment.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s happening up and down the country.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe added: \u201cAt any point at least 20 to 30 per cent of hospital beds are occupied by people who don\u2019t need to be there.\u201d\r\n\r\nPlease support our work by contributing to our crowd funder<\/a> or by becoming a member<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The perilous state of social care is adding to the pressures on ambulance waiting times and on hospital beds, says DAUK’s chair. Ms Helen Fernandes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dauk-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Community care<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Assessment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n