Almost 1,500 care homes have closed in the last six years, figures from the health watchdog revealed yesterday.
Experts say the closures are having a devastating impact on the lives of vulnerable elderly patients.
Many are being kept in hospital unnecessarily, becoming ‘bed blockers’, because there is no room in nearby homes.
The Care Quality Commission said it is extremely concerned about the ‘pace’ of closures – which is driven by a crisis in funding – and warned it could ‘undermine the quality and safety of care that people receive’.
Tomorrow it will publish a damning report that is likely to show that hundreds of the remaining homes are putting patients at risk.
Figures obtained from the CQC by BBC News show there are now 16,614 care homes and nursing homes in England – down from 18,068 in September 2010.
The closures are being fuelled by Government cuts to councils’ social care budgets.
Councils are not paying care home providers enough to keep up with the costs of looking after vulnerable residents.
This means it is not profitable for providers to keep so many homes open, so they shut those that are running at a loss.
But the closures are happening just as demand is steadily increasing due to our ageing population.
Figures obtained from the CQC by BBC News show there are now 16,614 care homes and nursing homes in England – down from 18,068 in September 2010. And the lack of available spaces is leading to rising numbers of the elderly being kept in hospital.
This has a devastating impact on their health and means there is a lack of beds for patients coming in from A&E.
CQC’s chief inspector of adult social care, Angela Sutcliffe, said: ‘It does highlight a concern that the long-term sustainability of high-quality care within this sector could be at risk …
‘We know that the adult social care sector faces many financial pressures, which worryingly could undermine the quality and safety of care that people receive and rely upon every day.’
Tomorrow the CQC will publish its annual report on the standards of care at England’s thousands of care homes, hospitals and GPs surgeries.
Last year it rated a third of the 17,000 residential and nursing homes as either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement.’
Experts are also worried about a repeat of the collapse of the Southern Cross healthcare group in 2011, which left 30,000 elderly residents having to be urgently relocated.
The provider was forced to close all of its 750 care homes because it could no longer afford the rent.
In a further blow, many providers are cutting back on council-funded home care visits because they aren’t profitable.
This means vulnerable residents who rely on such visits to help them wash and dress are suddenly having them stopped.
Last night Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, which represents care homes, said the Government needed to take ‘urgent action’ to provide councils with more funding.
‘We have been warning about these problems for some time. There is a lot of churn in the sector – contracts changing hands as providers leave and services stopping,’ he said.
‘There is simply not enough money in the system.’ Caroline Abrahams, of charity Age UK, added: ‘Few public services are as important as social care, and yet it is clearly in serious, progressive decline.’
A Department of Health spokesman admitted the current market was ‘challenging.’ But they said ministers were taking steps to help through the creation of a new pot of money called the Better Care Fund.”
East Devon Watch 