Over 400,000 older people in the UK live in care homes, including nearly one in six over-85s, and they often have complex health and social care needs. We have produced guidance for commissioners to promote better models of medical care for care home residents.
Eileen Burns, President of the British Geriatrics Society, is calling for the NHS 10 ten year plan to meet the needs our ageing population.
The British Geriatrics Society’s ‘Position Statement on Primary Care for Older People’ published today calls for more care and treatment to be delivered in the community to be better meet the needs of our ageing population, and urges the Government to build this into the long term plans for the NHS.
NHS has been in a crisis for a few years now and if anyone thinks it can’t get any worse, they are in for a shock. It is like an overcrowded bus which keeps picking up passengers at every stop where more people get in than that get out. The bus is jam packed with little space to manoeuvre, untidy, and is tipping dangerously.
It’s traditional to start any piece of writing on older people with frailty with a reminder that there are a lot of them, and that there will be a lot more of them in the future. This will not come as a surprise to frequenters of the British Geriatrics Society website.
Muscle weakness and poor balance are key risk factors for falls. I have long thought that if we would work out a population approach this would be a great step forward in the area of falls prevention.
People may argue that services in the community must be developed to provide care appropriate to the needs of the population now and in the future, but how can this be done?
The BGS Autumn Meeting will cover the latest scientific research and the best clinical practice in care of older people. Our ageing population is stimulating extensive NHS service redesign to deal with the challenge of caring for larger numbers of older people both in and out of hospitals.
The Policy Report which was published in the October issue of the BGS Newsletter
Our priorities include a reform of the way services are delivered so that more care and treatment is available in community settings. We are calling for this to be built into the development and delivery of the NHS long term plan.
This paper sets out our views on how primary care can deliver better health outcomes for older people. We call for the changes required to achieve this to be built into the Government’s long term plans for the NHS.
A lot of our policy and influencing work in the last year has focused on social care and the health impacts for older people, and the associated implications for our members' work, when there are difficulties in accessing good quality social care.
In order to make progress against our policy aims and objectives BGS engages in a mix of proactive and reactive activity. All of it is evidence-based and focused on the unique contribution that the Society is able to bring to inform policy development decisions. Some of it involves keeping a watching brief on external developments that have an impact on our members’ work and on the healthcare of older people. In this update I have provided a summary of recent developments and some of the engagement we have had.
The BGS responded to the review of the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2020 by Department of Health and Social Care. While lauding the progress made in promotion of public messages, the BGS remains concerned that cuts to public health funding are a barrier to spreading the public health message
There have been lots of positive opportunities for engaging with key opinion formers and decision makers in the last few months. We have been busy making the most of these opportunities, as well as continuing to build and strengthen our links with other organisations that we want to work with.