Age UK publish ‘The State of Health and Care of Older People in 2024’
Age UK has published a report entitled: ‘The State of Health and Care of Older People in 2024’.
The report shows that two million older people in England are now living with some unmet need for social care.
Other key findings from the report include:
- The number of people over 75 has grown by 18% since 2017.
- Fewer older people are receiving local authority long term care (542,420 2022/23 compared to 565,240 in 2017/18).
- Growth in the number of GPs is not keeping pace with the population growth of older people aged 75+.
- The risk of needing to attend A&E increases as we get older: per 100,000 population, there are 49,917 attendances for the 75-79 age group, rising to 93,931 for those aged over 90.
- The social care sector is struggling to fill vacancies in almost every key adult social care role.
- The numbers of district nurses reduced by 17.5% between 2014 and 2023 – a trend that directly affects quality of care in people’s own homes and makes the need for acute care more likely.
In relation to dementia, the report highlights that the diagnostic target set in the ‘Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia 2020’ (published in 2015) hasn’t been consistently met since the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the NHS’s diagnostic capacity, particularly access to CT, MRI and PET scans, means that access to future dementia treatments may not be timely or equitable.
You can read the report here: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/health–wellbeing/state-of-health-and-care/state_of_health_and_social_care_24.pdf