Senior NHS consultant neurologist: Britain's single-payer system killing up to 130,000 elderly patients a year

An effective abandonment of NHS waiting times targets will cause more "discomfort and pain" for elderly patients, it has been claimed. The changes announced by health service chief Simon Stevens have prompted widespread anger, with politicians, charities and health bodies labelling them “appalling”. Under the shake-up, patients face longer waits for non-emergency surgery such as cataract operations and hip replacements in a “trade off” for improved care elsewhere, such as cancer diagnosis and in A&E departments, said Mr Stevens.

The NHS and social care system in the UK is facing a staggering increase in the cost of looking after elderly people within the next few years, according to major new research which shows a 25% increase in those who will need care between 2015 and 2025. Within eight years, there will be 2.8 million people over 65 needing nursing and social care, unable to cope alone, says the research – largely because of the toll of dementia in a growing elderly population. The research, published by the respected Lancet Public Health medical journal, says cases of disability related to dementia will rise by 40% among people aged 65 to 84, with other forms of disability increasing by about 31%. The new figures follow a furore over the Conservative manifesto and Theresa May’s U-turn on social care this week. In a bid to keep the costs of care down, the manifesto said those needing care at home would have to pay until they had £100,000 in savings left, including the cost of their home.

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NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday. Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly. He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country. It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent. There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.

Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London. He said: ‘The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway. ‘Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP. ‘Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition.

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