Britain grapples with elder care

LONDON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Britain is grappling with how to administer elder care, family pay caps and how to avoid having the elderly "fall through the gaps," an official says.

Dr. Dan Poulter, a Conservative minister of Parliament who sits on an all-party health select committee, said the elderly were falling through the gaps because of turf and funding battles between the National Health Service and local government-run social care, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Poulter, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, said the decision to allow primary care physicians to abandon responsibility for after-hours care had been "the single biggest disaster in medical care" in a decade, because it results in the elderly ending up in hospital emergency room.

"The divide between health and social care has got a lot worse in the last five years," Poulter told the Telegraph. "You end up with a series of endless turf wars about who is paying for what, when all that front line healthcare professionals care about is the needs of their patients."

The committee has also been studying healthcare funding of the elderly. Andrew Dilnot, an economist, has called for a cap of about $55,000 to be placed on the amount anyone pays towards their care, while a working group of the Department of Health is reported to have recommended a higher ceiling, of between $78,500 and $94,000.

In Britain, the NHS provides free medical care for the elderly, but social care, or assisted living -- supervision or assistance with daily living -- is only paid for by the state in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland when a person has exhausted private resources, such as selling their home.