If nursing homes don’t care | Letter

Your editorial on the failures of privatization of care services (October 7) rightly highlights the shameful situation that has developed for older people in residential care. The Nuffield Foundation research clearly shows that increasing outsourcing of this provision is associated with lower standards of care.

I have known many nursing home staff and managers, but never known anyone who does not want the best for their residents. However, almost all of the largest private providers of nursing home places for the elderly are now owned by offshore private equity firms for whom profit is the primary motivation. For these companies, economies of scale, low wages, minimal staffing and cost savings are the order of the day. They are opening larger and larger care homes, often built on cheap land, far away from local communities. These silos of residents, many of whom have been living in loneliness and isolation for the last few months, pay tens of thousands of pounds a year for this privilege. They often have to spend their savings and will most likely sell their home to finance their care.

In addition, in recent years we have seen the publicly acknowledged shortcomings of the regulator, the Healthcare Quality Commission, which appears unable to hold these healthcare conglomerates to account, or even manage their own activities. In addition, many thousands of beds are occupied every day in hospitals because no places exist in care homes, contributing to our scandalously long waiting lists.

Is it right that frail, sick and vulnerable elderly people are simply used as profit generators for these companies? Many of us had high hopes when Wes Streeting proclaimed his ‘National Care Service’, but apart from the perverse announcement of even greater use of the private sector, very little government policy has emerged to address the long-standing failures in residential solve healthcare provision.
Norman Edwards
Highworth, Wiltshire