Health and care leaders need to recruit the equivalent of the population of Newcastle, the care regulator for England said, as it warned of a gridlock paralysing services and risking people’s health.
It is getting “tougher” to access care, with one of the main reasons for the gridlock a lack of workforce, the Care Quality Commission warned. Chief executive Ian Trenholm said the recruitment challenge health and care leaders face “is going to translate into real difficulty” this winter and in the years ahead.
The regulator said it had seen a significant rise in the last year in the number of people stuck in hospital because there was insufficient social care for them upon discharge. In some cases almost half the hospital was full of people medically fit to be discharged but who were waiting for social care support, it said.
