Home care providers under 'intolerable' pressure to take hospital patients

Home care providers are facing “intolerable pressure” to accept new care requests from hospitals struggling to meet targets - prompting the chief executive of the Homecare Association to call the issue “a slow-motion car crash”.

NHS trusts have a target to discharge 30 per cent of people from hospital by 14 January and 50 per cent by 31 January, but Dr Jane Townson, the chief executive of the Homecare Association has said people are dying at home within nine hours of being discharged from hospital.

Recent data from NHS England has revealed that the number of NHS staff off sick with Covid has almost quadrupled since the Omicron variant took hold in December - leaving an average of 45,000 frontline staff absent from work.

People dying 'within nine hours of discharge'

Two thirds of home care providers are turning away new care requests due to their own staff shortages, according to a survey from the National Care Forum and Dr Townson has said that when it comes to hospital patients “there is nowhere to discharge them to.”

“Some care providers are being placed under almost intolerable pressure to accept hospital discharges, despite repeatedly making clear they do not have enough care workers to do so" said Dr Jane Townson.

“We are hearing stories of hospitals discharging people who are allegedly medically fit for discharge back to their own homes with care, who then die within 9 hours of discharge.

“We also face the most challenging period in living memory in terms of retention and recruitment of care staff.”

The care leader said the government’s new regulations requiring vaccination as a condition of deployment for home care staff, (coming into force on 1 April 2022) “has not helped” and will “risk us losing up to 20 per cent of the home care workforce.

‘Slow-motion car crash'

“It’s a slow-motion car crash and even more older and disabled people who need and receive care will suffer the consequences."

Almost 9,000 people in England are waiting for home care services according to data obtained by the Observer. Freedom of Information responses from 96 councils in England, revealed 8,808 people have 'unallocated' or unsourced hours of home care, which means they are not getting the home care they have been assessed as needing.

Dr Townson said some people needing care are being discharged into hotels staffed by live-in care workers flown in from overseas “as there is no alternative”.

Meanwhile, just under six million people in England are currently waiting for hospital treatment and more than 300,000 people have been waiting more than a year for surgery according to NHS data.

The Homecare Association chief has welcomed the government’s vision for social care, which puts home-based care at the centre, but has warned “to turn this vision into reality, homecare needs much greater investment.”