The NHS Alliance would like to see a revolution in how we care for people as they grow older. We believe that this will require a much greater emphasis on housing-based solutions since suitable housing and support can keep people out of hospital and expensive nursing homes for much longer. This Age UK report points to some very important gaps.
One important way that this could be tackled is by working with not-for-profit developers to develop unused NHS land enabling the profits to be reinvested in housing and health solutions for older people. One Housing Group, a member of the NHS Alliance, has pioneered such a development model and we would like to see it replicated many times over.
Rick Stern, cheif executive, NHS Alliance said: “Big hospitals and institutionalised nursing homes are not good places to care for frail or confused elderly people – it’s expensive and it’s not the care most older people want now. They question is, can housing and health work together to create new joint ventures that build the new homes and facilities we need? It’s just possible that when we look back in thirty years time, we will be simply amazed that we still thought of this as health care in the 21st Century”.
Read the report here.
