A DORSET County Hospital governor says older people are ‘fed up’ with being blamed for the pressures on the NHS.

There has been plenty of media attention on the strain on the country’s health services this winter, particularly accident and emergency departments that are being stretched to the limit.

Patient governor Derek Julian has slammed claims by many that the nation’s increasing elderly population is responsible for the crisis as ‘simplistic’ and says there are numerous other reasons why the NHS finds itself under pressure.

He said: “People stop me in the street, older people, and they say they are getting fed up of being blamed for the state of the NHS.

“It’s extremely simplistic for NHS officials to say it’s because people are living longer, it’s because of older people and bed blocking.”

Mr Julian, right, said he accepted elderly care was a factor but so too were things like the increasing population and birth rate, national obesity levels and widespread alcohol misuse.

He said he has done inspections at the accident and emergency ward at Dorset County Hospital and on one occasion counted to see how many people coming in were elderly.

Mr Julian said 65 per cent of those attending were younger people, while just 35 per cent were elderly.

He said that one of the biggest reasons the NHS is getting into difficulty is mismanagement at the top level, with millions of pounds wasted on things like unsuccessful IT projects and problems with the introduction of the new out-of-hours service.

Mr Julian said: “The NHS needs to change, there is an awful lot of wastage. Change is needed to protect the future of the service for generations to come.”

He said that a more transparent approach is needed to make NHS bosses more accountable for their budgets, while the organisation needs to do more to listen to the public rather than spending exorbitant fees on outside consultants.

Mr Julian said that patients at Dorset County Hospital were fortunate that the accident and emergency department particularly did not seem to be affected by the same sort of pressures felt elsewhere and was still performing well. He said the problem was more at a national level and NHS bosses needed to stop blaming the older generation.

Mr Julian said: “They keep blaming older people, we are the generation of the war years, we started the NHS. We know extreme poverty, we didn’t get in debt like modern generations and we paid our taxes.”