HEALTH officials could not have chosen a more apt place than Ilkley to pioneer a scheme designed to help ease pressure on precious hospital beds. The town has a far higher percentage of older residents than the national average.

An ageing population regrettably also means a population with more health problems than normal. With finite medical resources it seems only logical to manage those health problems as efficiently as possible. That is where the Evercare health project comes in. Nurse practitioners are employed to develop a total care package for their patients including social as well as medical services.

If it is done properly, elderly patients are looked after better than ever before and any health problems are picked up sooner rather than later to avoid unnecessary and distressing trips to the emergency admissions department at hospitals. Minor ailments can be nipped in the bud before they get a chance to develop into anything more serious. Hospital bosses are sometimes criticised nowadays for concentrating on financial matters and balancing the books at the expense of looking after the community but any such accusation would be wide of the mark in this case.

Not only does the scheme free up vital beds and avoid patients being admitted to hospital, it also allows for quicker discharges because there is a qualified nurse on hand to take care of follow-up issues. Across the country the £5 million scheme should soon pay for itself with saving on expensive nursing home and hospital treatment and will quite sensibly continue when the pilot project comes to an end in October.

But the real bonus of the scheme should not be estimated in purely financial terms. The benefit to patients is inestimable as it allows them to remain in their own homes instead of having to be moved to unfamiliar and often stressful surroundings to take care of problems which could have been solved before they became so acute. Long may it continue and thrive.