I am so looking forward to government care in my old age. Aren’t you?

**Posted by Phineas

I mean, it’s working so well in Britain:

More than half care home residents denied basic care, unpublished data shows

More than half of elderly and disabled people in care homes are being denied basic health services while staff are failing to to do enough to preserve their dignity, according to an official review.

Some older people routinely have to wait up to three months for formal checks for painful conditions such as bed sores, according to figures from the health care watchdog.

A quarter were not given a choice of male or female staff to help them use the lavatory and more than a third of care homes surveyed admitted delays in getting medication to residents.

Campaigners blamed NHS bureaucrats showing a β€œlack of interest” and failing to provide expert assessments for conditions as basic as incontinence.

(…)

Fresh evidence of the failings in the system was detailed as a raft of previously unpublished data gathered by the health care regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was released.

It was drawn from the first ever nationwide review of how the needs of needs of care home residents across England are met.

The CQC report discloses that people suffering from incontinence have to wait more than two weeks for an assessment of their condition in almost 40 per cent of homes for the elderly surveyed.

But a separate detailed analysis of the CQC data carried out by the British Geriatrics Society, also found that more than 40 per cent specialist providers set themselves a target as long as 90 days to carry out such assessments.

Such delays have led to elderly people being denied the treatment they need or forced to wear incontinence clothing when they do not need it.

Even worse, a quarter of the old folks’ homes surveyed reported that staff had little-to-no idea of what their residents’ care needs are.

Not surprisingly, over a thousand of the elderly descended on Parliament to protest their miserable care and demand the government do something. But therein lies the problem: government did do something and, as government often does when it replaces the private sector and tries to do those things it was never meant to do, it created a mess. Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), so admired by President Obama’s now-departed CMS head Donald Berwick, is forced to ration care to control costs — and that apparently includes care for the aged. As the head of the UK Geriatrics Society said:

β€œWhat it shows is that there is a massive disconnect between what the NHS aspires to and what it actually delivers to people in care homes and they are the most vulnerable group of people”

While nursing-home care for the elderly isn’t yet part of ObamaCare (1), we can expect it will be someday as the federal bureaucracy moves to take over all aspects of health care.

And we can expect that same “massive disconnect,” too.

via Via Meadia

Footnote:
(1) At least, not that I know of. But then, nobody really knows what’s in the PPACA, do they?

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

Comments are closed.