Community settings structurally underequipped

The longitudinal record

1. 2026-06 · Established

   National scale: PAC data (17% vs 100% GP frailty assessment; 32 of 106 areas assessed fewer than 10% of patients aged 65+). OPAT preservation (PMID 41301668: frailty index stable, cognition improved 8.5%); clinical psychology (PMID 41681059: hospitalisation normalised within 2 years); palliative care (PMID 42072943: 89% preferred place of death with team continuity and family carer support). Preservation function currently unmeasured and uncommissioned.

2. 2026-07 · Established

   A community palliative care triage-tool audit, a qualitative account of community nursing's unrecognised injectable-medication workload, and a new research protocol targeting deprivation-linked palliative access inequity all located the binding constraint in workforce and system design rather than treatment availability. Corroborated at policy level: a new government community-services waiting-time target (80% within 18 weeks by 2028–29), and a national dataset now tracking, daily, patients held in clinically inappropriate acute settings for want of upstream community capacity.