Jeremy Hunt pledges to assign personal NHS workers to older patients

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt made a number of important announcements this week, and one of his most important saw the health secretary pledge to improve healthcare for older patients in the UK. The news should reassure all of those who need to use such mobility aids as walk in showers and baths as the pledge shows a move towards care which is more personal and should hopefully result in less chance of the dangers that come with lack of supervision.

Jeremy Hunt has made a number of pledges during his time as health secretary, but his efforts towards making the UK a good country in which to grow older has been one of his focuses during his time on the job. With increasingly better medication and care, people are living for longer than ever, and making sure that the standard of care is good enough to cope with this has become incredibly important to the government in recent months.

In summary, the pledge is to make sure that every vulnerable elderly patient in England will have a personal NHS worker assigned to them who will be responsible for making sure that all of the their health and care needs are fulfilled to a high standard. The key to this pledge is making sure that a sense of duty is established on a more personal level, and that this is applied to all those that need it most.

Jeremy Hunt also announced in his review that he is expecting a significant change across the NHS, and as well as assigning a single "named individual" to older patients, he also announced that there will be changes to out-of-hours care so that detailed patient notes are available wherever they are needed, as well as stating that payment towards hospitals and GPs depending on the number of specific procedures they carry out will change.

The assignment of an individual who will look after the care needs of older patients is sure to be welcomed in particular, as a number of jobs will be carried out by one point of contact from arranging physiotherapy to ensuring that they get the right home help, whether in the form of stairlifts or pre-cooked meals.

These changes are planned to be rolled out from 2014 and should be done so quickly according to Mr Hunt. He said that the "concept of a case manager" has been praised by many before, but now is the time "to make a reality of that" as an increasing number of people look for support from the NHS.

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