A system struggling to care…

By Dan Skipper, Chief Executive Officer, Age UK Norwich

Last week, a carer drove from a hospital to our club,
terrified about what was happening to her husband. She had just been told he
was being discharged tomorrow, but she didn’t understand his diagnosis, didn’t
feel able to cope at home, and hadn’t been advised what support would be
arranged for his care. She was overwhelmed, frightened, and alone.

This encounter captures a growing reality of our healthcare system.
Every week, we see older people and their families struggling with difficulty accessing
their GP or dentist, long waits for treatment, confusion over medication, and being
bounced between hospitals, GPs and social care.

These challenges are serious enough, but there is also the growing
acceptance of something more shocking – the normalisation of corridor care.

Across England, tens of thousands of older people are being
cared for in hospital corridors or other makeshift spaces for hours, sometimes days.
Many receive life-changing news without privacy, use bedpans in public view,
and in some tragic cases, die before reaching a ward.

A decade ago, waiting hours in A&E was rare. Today, it’s
common. Age UK’s new report, The Longest Wait, reveals that one in three
people aged 90+ waited more than 12 hours in A&E last year, and more than
1.15 million people aged 60+ endured similar delays – a fivefold increase since
2015.

What was once a symptom of winter pressure has become a
feature of a normal hospital, and we’re not immune to this in this region. With
one of the oldest populations in the country, we should be deeply concerned.

This isn’t a problem of too many people turning up at
A&E. Attendance has risen by 5 per cent since 2019, but 12-hour waits have
increased by nearly 2,000 per cent. The real issue is hospital flow – how
people move through the system and a lack of support when they leave.

On any given day, 13,000 people who are medically fit to go
home remain in a hospital bed, with almost all over 65. When they can’t leave,
others can’t be admitted.

It’s important to say clearly that our NHS and Social Care
staff are working under relentless pressure, facing impossible choices to try
and keep people safe in locations never meant for care, and it’s unfair to ask them
to compromise the very purpose of their vocation – care.  

The human cost for corridor care is not just undignified, it’s
dangerous. If you wait more than 12 hours in A&E you’re twice as likely to
die within 30 days of discharge, as someone seen within two hours. Fear now
keeps people away. One in three older people say they would be less likely to
go to hospital because of corridor care; and more than half say they would feel
anxious if they did.

Whatever happens with devolution and NHS reform, the direction
for health and care is clear:

• Support must begin in the community.
• It must be preventative.
• It must reverse the decline in population health.

That means investing differently –
to prevent ill health, poverty and isolation before they escalate into hospital
care. This isn’t about spending more; it’s about spending better. We must fund
the right interventions: tackling malnutrition, dehydration, obesity and mental
health at their roots, rather than their symptoms. Billions are spent in the
NHS on the symptoms of preventable issues.

This means scaling up what already works – health coaching,
talking therapy, debt advice, community clubs and classes. It means helping people
claim benefits they’re entitled to, tackling poor housing, and reducing
loneliness and frailty. These services already exist in the community, but they
must be properly integrated into healthcare and funded at a scale our
population needs.

People do not live in silos, yet most of our health system
still operate as if they do. Health sits apart from social care, mental
wellbeing apart from physical health, community apart from hospital.  When care fails to join up, we see the
consequences, such as corridor care.

Ending corridor care will take more than sympathy; it
requires leadership and action. Government must set a date to end corridor care.
We must rebuild the community capacity that prevents people ending up in
A&E in the first place, strengthen the support when they first become
unwell, and rehab on discharge.

This is not just about hospitals. It’s about our whole
approach to ageing, the care we expect in later life and how we fund it as a
society. Our ageing population is growing older fast, and our population is
getting sicker. Time is not on our side.

If we don’t act now, corridor care will become the norm
rather than the exception. That’s neither care nor dignity – two words that
should be core to any healthcare system.