Re: David Oliver: Reducing emergency admissions from care homes
Editor
Drs Plummer and Howe say that I have not focussed on solutions and only described problems. In fact, what is only a short column is nonetheless heavily populated with solutions and linked to a number of references describing solutions. With very specific regard to the role of GPs, the answer is that GPs cannot be the sole solution. First, some of the solutions, as Clive Bowman has pointed out, lie within the care homes and the chains who run many of them. Second, input from community teams including palliative medicine, geriatricians, old age psychiatrists, allied health professionals, pharmacists and advanced practitioners are all important.
The answer is not so much with any lack of solutions, nor lack of successful good practice models, nor lack of recommendations for good practice. It is more that we don't have the workforce in sufficient numbers to do everything for all residents all of the time - with GPs and Community Nurses being workforce groups under arguably the largest pressure of all.
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Re: David Oliver: Reducing emergency admissions from care homes
Editor
Drs Plummer and Howe say that I have not focussed on solutions and only described problems. In fact, what is only a short column is nonetheless heavily populated with solutions and linked to a number of references describing solutions. With very specific regard to the role of GPs, the answer is that GPs cannot be the sole solution. First, some of the solutions, as Clive Bowman has pointed out, lie within the care homes and the chains who run many of them. Second, input from community teams including palliative medicine, geriatricians, old age psychiatrists, allied health professionals, pharmacists and advanced practitioners are all important.
The answer is not so much with any lack of solutions, nor lack of successful good practice models, nor lack of recommendations for good practice. It is more that we don't have the workforce in sufficient numbers to do everything for all residents all of the time - with GPs and Community Nurses being workforce groups under arguably the largest pressure of all.
David Oliver
Competing interests: No competing interests