Elderly patients are suffering a lower quality of life due to cuts to social care funding, a powerful committee of MPs has warned.
The health select committee also claims cuts in support are driving increased demands on the NHS and called for an overhaul of the system.
It has recommended that elderly care, health and housing services are all joined together to stop patients being "passed like a parcel".
Chairman Stephen Dorrell said: "This Government, like its predecessors going back to the 1960s, has stressed the importance it attaches to joined-up services.
"Growing demand, coupled with an unprecedented efficiency challenge, makes it more urgent than ever before to convert these fine words into fine deeds.
"We look to the Government to set out in its Social Care White Paper how this vital objective will be met."
The committee suggested that a failure to link the different services leads to more patients going to hospital and poorer outcomes.
It also warned that the NHS will fail to meet its efficiency saving targets of 4% every year over the next four years.
NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson told the committee so-called salami-slicing of budgets instead of integrating services would have "very serious consequences".
The Government has already committed to spend an extra �2bn-a-year on social care by 2014/15 but the committee warned this would not be enough.
Its report said "funding pressures" had caused service levels to be slashed which was leaded to a "diminished quality of life for elderly patients".
The cross-party committee also said the large bills pensioners are left with for services such as home help come as a "shock" to many.
And it called on the Government to accept the "principle" of a cap in costs following the recommendation last year by the Dilnot Commission for the state to step in when bills rise above �35,000.
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