King's Fund review reveals concerns about the NHS health and care system

The King’s Fund have released their quarterly monitoring report as part of the think tank’s work to track, analyse and comment on the changes and challenges facing the NHS health and care system.

It reports on the performance of the NHS, with 48 financial directors and 58 directors of adult social services completing the online survey. The survey has been carried out in order to gain a perspective on care services and the financial pressures currently facing authorities.

The results explore the impact of the financial squeeze and found that more than a third of directors are expecting to have to reduce the volume of services to make necessary financial savings over the next year.

Concern has also been raised over the quality of health and social care by nearly half of directors who thought that the quality of services they commissioned had worsened in the past year.

The number of people receiving publicly funded social care through local authorities has fallen by 17 per cent since 2006/7. However, over the same period there has been a 20 per cent increase in people aged 85 years and over, with a record 57 per cent of elderly people in care meeting the costs in full or in part from their own or their family’s resources.

Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK, described the findings about social care as “very grim reading”.

She says: “many of the most vulnerable in our society are having their dignity and safety compromised on a daily basis.”

Several comments from the survey suggested that in order to keep or improve the quality of care, fewer people are actually receiving the service to decrease the volume of care offered.

There was generally a positive view about collaboration, partnerships and the difference the transferred money was making, but as the financial and service pressures tighten, the report described how both NHS and adult social service directors felt this was becoming more difficult.

Local authority finance directors describe a variety of ways they plan to manage the demands on services and budgets, as the number of people needing care and support continues to grow. Around a fifth planned to increase charges, and other measures to manage budgets such as re designing services and paying below inflation fee increases to providers were described by the directors are measure they were intending to take over the next year.

Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham said: “This is why the Government’s proposals on social care will ring hollow to families across England. People’s real experience of the care system is that they are facing ever increasing charges, seeing services cut back and facing a desperate daily struggle to get the care they need.

“Social care directors fear they will need to further reduce services and increase charges over the next year to cope with Government budget cuts. More than £1.3bn has already been cut from local council social care budgets and the Government cannot continue to ignore the crisis in care.”

The report reflected a feeling of gloom and uncertainty surrounding the state of the NHS care system, with three quarters of the directors asked about the financial prospects of their local community saying they were either very or fairly pessimistic.

To read the report visit http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_file/quarterly-monitoring-report-feb2013.pdf