PEOPLE with asthma, heart disease and other chronic conditions who are frequently admitted to hospital as emergency cases are to be treated at home in a drive to ease the cash crisis in the NHS.

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, is today announcing a scheme intended to save more than £400 million a year by cutting the number of emergency visits to hospital caused by chronic illnesses. Instead, patients will receive more home care, with help from community nurses. The Government hopes to reduce the number of admissions to accident and emergency by a third.

In the announcement, which follows reports of drastic cost-cutting in the NHS, including bed closures, staff cuts and operation delays, Ms Hewitt will say that the savings could amount to £2.5 million per primary care trust. “Some people with long-term conditions experience their lives as going from one emergency hospital admission to another,” she will say.

“While it’s important to know the hospital is always there, it’s a much better, more stable, life for people if they can be treated in the community. Having so many unplanned admissions can also make it harder to develop day-to-day services in the hospital and increase costs. More efficient community treatment can avoid the need for hospitalisation.”

However, nursing leaders say that staffing levels may not be adequate and extra funding will be required. “We are very supportive of care moving from the hospital to the community, but there has to be the capacity,” Beverley Malone, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, told the BBC yesterday. She was concerned that the aim was to find a “cheaper alternative” — yet to build the capacity would “take resources”.

The NHS spends £1.3 billion a year on admissions for patients with 18 common conditions. According to the Department of Health, these patients are often admitted to hospital three or more times in a year. In some regions this can account for up to 25 per cent of a hospital’s costs, it is claimed. In her speech today Ms Hewitt says that record levels of funding are going into the NHS, “but we have a duty to the taxpayer as well as the patient to ensure that we get more value for this extra money”.

Donna Covey, of Asthma UK, said that there were more than 72,000 hospital admissions for asthma every year, and three quarters were preventable. “People with asthma who experience frequent symptoms and attacks probably do not have their asthma under control because they are not receiving the right information,” she said. “They need expert assessment to help them identify the reasons for their poor asthma control and to provide appropriate treatment and support.”

WHO IS AFFECTED

The conditions where community treatment can reduce costs include:

Cellulitis, the skin complaint (more than 45,000 admissions costing £87 million)

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