It’s time to admit it: the NHS is unable to look after our elderly

I decided to become a hospital visitor last year, after being a patient and finding myself in something more like a factory than an old-fashioned ward. A terror of infection in 2011 (there were 2,053 deaths involving Clostridium difficile) has ended the cosy world of side tables covered in flowers and cards. Concerns about data protection have put paid to WRVS ladies pushing trolleys, and vicars walking around offering solace. There aren’t even many nurses about, and even if there were, you wouldn’t want to bother them for tea and a chat. It’s OK if you have family or friends nearby, but if you don’t, being a patient in today’s NHS is a bleak experience.

This isolation gets worse the older you are; in fact, if you are old and alone in hospital, you can practically become a missing person. On wards with grand-sounding names like ‘pulmonary hypertension’, I met people who have little wrong with them except old age and a lack of visitors. These are the ‘bed-blockers’, a 30,000-strong scourge of the NHS, resented by everyone from the government down for clogging up the system: the loneliest, frailest members of our society.

There was a tiny lady of 93, no longer ill but too frail to return home. At first she was very jolly and told me in her fluting, refined voice about her father, who managed a famous biscuit company, and about courting in the Wrens. Over three weeks I saw a change; her voice became faint, she sat with her head hanging down, breakfast untouched. No one helped her to eat. She had a cut by her eye and her hospital gown was stained. I asked a nurse if she could have something else to wear but they don’t keep any spare clothing. If a patient has no visitors, their only option is a hospital gown.