Pensioners face death away from home (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Pensioners face death away from home

OLDER people face the prospect of living their last days in dirty hospital wards, miles from their friends and families a senior GP has claimed.

Tetbury GP Dr Tony Walsh says the proposed bed cuts at the town's hospital will see pensioners being treated in beds on the other side of the county.

He presented the bleak outlook to a packed public meeting held this week.

He said: "It comes down to this, do you want to go to Gloucester or Cheltenham to see your grandmother die of cancer?

"Those hospitals are full of infections, under-staffed and they cannot offer the quality of care, do you want that?"

His view is shared by Age Concern who fears the loss of community beds will hit the Cotswolds growing elderly population the hardest.

Age Concern spokesman Corrie Bond said: "It would be a great shame for older people to be taken out of their community, somewhere they may have lived their whole life, near their loved ones - it's just not fair."

"We have situations where we have a 70-year-old looking after 90-year-old parents - how difficult would it be for them to come from rural areas to Gloucester or Cheltenham? We would do everything we could to make sure that didn't happen."

Dr Walsh also warned the removal of elderly care beds at Tetbury and Fairford would put more pressure on services elsewhere.

He said: "This is a cost cutting measure - if beds are cut at Tetbury, Fairford, Bourton, Moreton and Cirencester we will have to take up the shortfall somewhere and the issue really is that it will block beds at the acute trust."

"The vast majority of these elderly people need to be in hospital, not nursing homes because they have some sort of acute problem."

Richard James, chief executive of Cotswold and Vale PCT, admitted: "It is miserable to go to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in terms of travel and patients' visitors - that may be true.

"If they could be accommodated in a nearby hospital it might not be such a nuisance. If you couldn't go to Tetbury and had to go to Cirencester that's not as bad as going to Gloucester."

But he also confirmed Tetbury could soon lose its beds as funding from the PCT will be withdrawn.

He said: "Trying to fund 11 beds at a relatively high cost means that other services may not be able to be provided.

"We want to provide local services for local people. No private nursing home would try to run an 11 bed nursing home, it is not financially viable."