Older people are being “written off” by the NHS and unnecessarily sent to nursing homes where they receive health care that is “probably worse than in prison”, a leading government health adviser has admitted.

Prof David Oliver, the Department of Health’s key adviser on the elderly, said that the NHS was “failing to do basic things for older people”.

He warned there was “endemic evidence of discriminatory attitudes from [NHS] staff”, which was leading to older people “systematically” getting a worse deal in hospitals across England than younger patients.

In evidence to a House of Lords Committee, Prof Oliver, the Department of Health’s clinical director for older people services, said that major change was needed.

Hospitals had failed to adapt to cope with people living longer, and while the NHS had enjoyed “fantastic success” at treating killer diseases, it was “palpably failing” to treat and care for those with long-term conditions, he said.

A Scottish Borders patient suffered seizures after being denied medication for five days because the ward had run out.

In another NHS Borders case, a stillborn baby was wrongly recorded as being alive and the parents sent a first birthday card a year later by the Child Smile oral health initiative. The report said the error was “disturbing” for the family.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran reported the diagnosis of a lung tumour was delayed until after it was no longer operable, though it was present in an earlier scan.

Another case in the area saw doctors remove a healthy organ from a patient after a GP did not forward scan results.

Alex Neil, the Health Minister, said boards should learn from “adverse events” to improve patient safety.

(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)