A Royal College of Physicians' report warns that hospitals in England could be on the brink of collapse because of the increased demand and the complexity of patients' conditions.
The college believes that urgent care is being compromised because the number of beds has been cut by a third over the past 25 years, but at the same time emergency admissions has started to rise and hospitals are seeing older patients with a wider variety of conditions. Advancements in medicine has led to people living longer, but this means they are increasingly developing complex long-term conditions such as dementia as a result.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said standards were slipping in hospitals throughout England. It has highlighted the way older patients were regularly moved around wards and the lack of continuity of care while in hospital as some of the examples of how care was suffering. The college is also concerned about the workload of staff.
Prof Tim Evans, of the RCP, said: "This evidence is very distressing. All hospital patients deserve to receive safe, high-quality sustainable care centred around their needs. We must act now to make the drastic changes required to provide the care they deserve." (BBC News, Sept 12)
The Royal College of Physicians believe the best way to improve care is to concentrate hospital services in fewer, larger sites that are able to provide excellent care round-the-clock, seven days a week. It also cites that improvements must be made in community services as there were many patients who ended up in hospital because of a lack of help where they live.
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