Dementia care costing 'lives and millions'
Poor dementia care costing lives and hundreds of millions of pounds, Alzheimer's Society declares
Also In The News
|
A quarter of a million children in England are at risk from skin cancer from sunbeds, researchers have warned today.
|  |
Tuesday, 17, Nov 2009 12:05
Dementia care in the UK is costing lives and hundreds of millions of pounds, according to a report from the Alzheimer's Society.
The charity said people with dementia occupy a quarter of all hospital beds, and are staying far longer in hospital than people without the condition who go in for the same treatment, at a cost of millions of to the NHS.
'Counting the Cost: caring for people with dementia on hospital wards', reveals there are large, costly variations in the quality of care for people with dementia. It found the majority of people with dementia leave hospital worse than when they arrived, and a third enter a care home, unable to return home.
The research was based on a survey of 2,427 people with dementia, carers, nursing staff and nurse managers.
Today the Alzheimer's Society is calling for all hospitals to reduce the average length of stay for a person with dementia by at least a week. The charity is also supporting calls from nurses to be equipped with the right training and tools to do the job.
It claims nurses told them that they wanted more access to specialist advice and help, with 89 per cent of nurses saying they found working with people with dementia very or quite challenging.
Neil Hunt, chief executive of Alzheimer's Society, said: "It is shocking that people with dementia are occupying up to a quarter of hospital beds yet there are scandalous variations in quality of dementia care in hospitals.
"A million more people will develop dementia in the next ten years. The NHS needs to start taking dementia seriously.
"At least £80 million a year and probably hundreds of millions could be saved if people with dementia are enabled to leave hospital one week earlier."
Broadcaster, journalist and Alzheimer's Society ambassador, Angela Rippon, who is supporting the campaign, added: "I know only too well how scary it can be for a person with dementia to go into hospital. It was awful watching my mother so vulnerable and frightened in this strange, noisy environment full of people she did not know."