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.
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?
If we had spent one tenth of the money we have spent on new titles, structures and logos on culture change instead, we would be in a far better position than we find ourselves, thinks Professor Martin Green. And the integrated services that citizens are crying out for might be a more attainable goal.
Much has been written about the need for healthcare systems to adapt to meet the growing demands associated with demographic changes and an ageing population worldwide. For this to truly happen, we need a culture change, says Diarmuid O’Shea, Consultant Geriatrician at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin.
The Reimagining community services report (Kings Fund 2018) highlights the need for strengthening community services with the aim of supporting our older population, bringing to reality the vision set out in the NHS Five Year Forward View.
Is getting old about decline or about personal growth? John Gladdman, of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, ruminates on the implications of increased life expectancy ahead of the talk he gave at the BGS Spring Meeting.
Despite increasing lifespans, there is little evidence that older people today are living healthier than their predecessors did at the same age. This is a major cause of concern for many. Ruby Yu examines the findings of a long term study of frailty and old age in Hong Kong.
Nowadays a majority of people above the age of 65 remain active. Vedamurthy Adhiyaman discusses why we should redefine old age.
Baroness Sally Greengross considers what the economic and societal effects of a global ageing society will be and says there's an increasing need for healthy older people to be employed into their seventies. She argues that the global phenomenon of ageing is not all bad news.
Exercise has been dubbed 'the miracle cure'. Sir Muir Gray argues that exercise not only prevents disease, disability and the factors that contribute to frailty but improves treatment outcomes, and urges BGS to establish a Living Well Special Interest Group.
The role of geriatricians and specialist health care professionals starts with identifying the care and treatment that best suits an older person’s individual needs and wishes, writes Eileen Burns, welcoming Independent Age’s new project, Doing care differently.
Unsurprisingly many of us have more medical needs as we get older. While some people manage to stay remarkably fit, for others it is getting more difficult to get around town or worse across country.
Care homes routinely feature in the press and not always for the right reasons. Sadly the negative stories do little to help us all promote the amazing work that is being done with people who live in care homes up and down the country.
Healthcare in Africa is no longer just about infectious diseases. Stroke is now the second leading cause of death worldwide and hypertension is the leading risk factor for mortality worldwide, with most of the deaths occurring in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Caroline Cooke, BGS Policy Manager explains why BGS has published its own election manifestofor the 2017 General Election, what it says and how you can get involved.
The BGS welcomes the announcement in the Chancellor’s Budget Statement on 8 March 2017, that the Government will be publishing a Green Paper in 2017 on the future financing of social care.
Seeing different European countries’ responses to an ageing population is an invaluable opportunity to learn and share innovation. As part of Health Education East Midlands’ Quality Improvement Fellowship, Barry Evans and Rachel Cowan were recently able to set up an exchange between the UK and the Netherlands for geriatricians in training.
The NHS England Five Year Forward View notes that support for frail older patients is one of three areas where the NHS faces particular challenges. So it's potentially game-changing to make positive steps towards addressing this through routine frailty identification and promoting interventions on falls risk identification and medication review.
BGS president Eileen Burns attended and spoke at a Global Summit on Ageing held in Shanghai in 2016. Here she reflects on the conference, the economics of ageing which was discussed, and Chinese attitudes to health and care.
The BGS Autumn meeting will cover the latest scientific research and the best clinical practice in careof 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.
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.