'Named Carer' Plan For Vulnerable Elderly

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants a named medic to be responsible for the care of every vulnerable elderly person in Britain.

It will mean that one doctor or nurse will be responsible for the patient when they are outside of hospital.

Mr Hunt will announce the plans in an attempt to make the NHS a "more personal service for vulnerable and elderly patients".

At an event celebrating the health service's 65th birthday, Mr Hunt will say: "The NHS is the nation's most loved and most successful institution.

"In 65 years, the NHS has quite simply done more to improve people's lives that any other institution in our history, and its equity and excellence make us the envy of the world. Today we express our thanks to the millions of hard-working NHS staff who literally save lives round the clock. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

"But as we celebrate, we also reflect. The world today is very different to 1948. The old model was curable illnesses where you went into hospital unwell and came out better.

"Yet most people now leave hospital with long-term conditions which need to be supported and managed at home.

"Fully one quarter of the population now has a chronic condition, including 2.8 million with diabetes, three million people with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and 2.3 million with heart disease - all of whom need radically different models of care to what the NHS has been accustomed to.

"So the challenge today is to provide integrated, coordinated, out of hospital care. Something where the NHS, with our tradition of family doctors and primary care, could lead the world.

"But to do that we need to know that there is a clinician accountable for vulnerable older people in the community, just as there is a consultant responsible for them in hospital. As a member of the public, I would like that to be my GP - but whoever it is, they should be named so that patients, families and carers all know where the buck stops.

"We are proposing to ask NHS England to make sure there is a named clinician responsible for every vulnerable older person, whether or not they are in hospital."