There will be 1,400 people with dementia stranded in hospital this Christmas

More than 1,400 dementia sufferers will be stranded in hospital on Christmas Day despite being well enough to go home, the Alzheimer’s Society said.

Charities have demanded more money for social care to reduce the pressure on hospitals and blamed a lack of funding for ‘turning wards into waiting rooms’.

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Patients suffering from dementia are delayed up to 10 times longer than those without the condition as a result.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, the shortfall in social care funding is as much as £2 billion.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: ‘With such scarce social care funding, wards are being turned into waiting rooms, and safety is being jeopardised.

A lack of funding is ‘turning wards into waiting rooms’ (Picture: Getty)

‘From the woman who spent two months on a bed in a corridor because there were no available care home places, to the man who died after months of waiting left him debilitated by hospital-acquired infections, people with dementia are repeatedly falling victim to a system that cannot meet their needs.

‘One million people will have dementia by 2021, yet local authorities’ social care budgets are woefully inadequate, and no new money has been promised in the budget to cope with increasing demand.’

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The charity studied hospital audits and found that people with dementia stayed an extra 500,000 days in hospital despite being well enough to leave, costing the NHS more than £170 million.

However, this is a conservative estimate as a third of dementia patients have not been diagnosed.

Longer hospital stays can be upsetting and confusing for people with dementia, and they may become too frail to be discharged home.

Long hospital stays are not good for dementia sufferers’ health (Picture: Getty)

Karen Moore, whose father had dementia and was stranded in hospital for six months, said: ‘Mum died of cancer while Dad was stuck in hospital, so I was grieving while also trying to sort out Dad’s care.

‘It was a nightmare. The hospital was great, but it wasn’t the right environment for Dad and we were under pressure to free up a bed.