The chief executives of two UK care charities have stressed the importance of telecare services and called for the current eligibility criteria for such services to be scrapped.
Speaking at a telehealthcare conference organised by specialists Tunstall in London yesterday, Stephen Burke, chief executive of Counsel and Care, and Imelda Redmond, chief executive of Carers UK, said existing “barriers and obstacles” to telecare must be removed.
Burke said: “The care agenda must be about personalisation and prevention, not just one or the other. The current system for helping patients in need of help in their own homes is broken, and in need of radical reform. Both patients and carers are calling for this reform, and we must look to involve all people, and not work on the basis of eligibility criterias.”
Burke and Redmond said that the government was already publishing good care strategies, but there was also an urgent need to help carers, who also work full-time jobs.
Redmond said: “The worth of an unpaid carer is the same as the value of the NHS, with 2.3m people becoming a carer each year. Employers face significant problems with tight situations arising daily from unpaid carers who want to stay in their current position, but have to leave at a moment’s notice to help care for a loved one.
“Telecare could help make these people’s lives a lot easier, safe in the knowledge that their loved one is still being monitored and can receive care whilst they carry on working. The problem is a huge number of cases don’t meet the eligibility criteria, and our own research shows 42% of patients refuse services unaware of its merits. Ultimately, this has to change.”
Many councils are already taking a lead on this, and are making the technology available for a fee if NHS support is unavailable, but a shortage of units means families who could use the help cannot obtain it.
Redmond added: “At the moment, the system is bottlenecked through local authorities. I think this technology should be made available to all families direct from vendors to purchase and take responsibility for.
“If a private call centre can be established, then families can remain safe in the knowledge their loved one is being tracked. We must do more enabling and help to signpost individuals and families to these useful services, perhaps a basic pack they can be given by their GP or at hospital discharge.”
Last month, health secretary Alan Johnson launched an intense six month debate about the future shape of care and support services to deal with the rapidly ageing population – in 20 years’ time a quarter of the entire adult population will be over 65 and the number of people over 85 will have doubled.
Both charities said the public should contribute to the debate through a series of events and through the national website.
As part of this, there will be a focus on innovative healthcare such as telecare through the formation of a new national learning network.
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