Home adaption could save on beds for elderly

The NHS could save thousands of pounds and reduce the number of elderly people forced to stay in hospital beds if more money was put into aids and adaptations in their own homes, the Commons health select committee heard last week.

Sue Adams, director of Care and Repair England, a charity which provides grants for people to adapt their homes, told the committee, which was hearing evidence on delayed discharges, that more spent on measures to prevent falls could have an impact on the numbers of elderly people admitted to hospital. 'Falls are a major reason people end up in hospital, ' she said.

'Then they go back to their own homes, and fall again.'

She called for a review of the way assessments are carried out for aids and adaptations - which currently take weeks if not months.

'We have to look at changing professional approaches to things as well.'

Ms Adams cited Bury and Leeds as places that had done this. They had managed to reduce the wait considerably by reducing the number of visits that occupational therapists made to assess a person's needs.

In some places, where a request for an adaptation is made by an elderly person, it is implemented without further assessment.

Then, at the same time the fitting is done, a further assessment is made of what else might be helpful. In Leeds, she said, the wait for adaptations was just 24 hours, which meant people got out of hospital a day earlier - and saved the hospital£500,000 a year. At the other end of the spectrum, a patient in Hackney this week faced discharge to an unheated flat with no hot water, she said.

In written evidence to the committee, the Independent Healthcare Association said had taken an inordinate amount of time for key messages on intermediate care to reach NHS and social services commissioners and to be put into effect'.This was 'particularly pertinent to the independent sector, which has in some areas been excluded from the development of intermediate care locally, ' the IHS added.