Scarlett McNally: Rethinking ageing can help the NHS recover

As a surgeon, I’m focused on the NHS’s huge waiting list for elective surgery and have written about how to improve it.1 But, given that only 13% of hospital bed days are used for elective surgery, this isn’t what’s depleting the NHS.2I recently did seven different conference presentations in a week. The most effective was for a public event in Eastbourne about the health benefits of active travel, especially a slide of the chief medical officer’s new annual report3 showing places where over 25% of the population will be over 75 by 2043. We can’t afford the costs of our ageing population to healthcare, social care, and the economy unless we change our passive expectations of ageing.In the NHS, 70% of bed days are used by people aged over 65.2 But hospital stays are damaging to older people’s future independence, as they can lose as much as 5% of their…
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