A HEALTH watchdog leader has called for elderly people to be kept out of hospital in a bid to improve care for old folk.

Nigel Robinson, chief officer of Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Community Health Council, said more resources should be ploughed into caring for patients in their own homes.

He backed an Audit Commission report which today called for closer links between the NHS and social services in a bid to change the emphasis away from hospital and residential home care.

Mr Robinson said: "Hospitals are not good places for elderly people to be.

"They get disorientated and it can take a long time to rehabilitate them and get them back into their homes or the community. If hospital stays can be avoided, all well and good. "But there has to be an infrastructure to support this and that is expensive. It is about time the NHS and social services came together and I think there is a move towards that in terms of community care. But there is the silly situation of one agency doing an assessment and the other delivering the care.

"They have to agree common ground and there should be one pot of money, instead of two, to pay for care."

The Audit Commission report, Coming of Age, claimed elderly people were often caught in the confusion of the NHS and social services failing to agree responsibilities and deadlines.

It said hospital admission rates were rising rapidly, putting severe pressure on hospitals.

The report added that in one city a review estimated that nearly half of all admissions of people aged over 75 years could have been avoided if safe, reliable alternatives had been available.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.