NHS bosses in Gloucestershire admit the health system is poorly designed after hearing a late patient’s difficulties in overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to access care.

Dame Gill Morgan, who chairs the NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, made the comments at their meeting earlier this week (Wednesday May 31).

She was responding to a story about the huge difficulties a late patient had in accessing health services.

Communication is something the NHS needs to improve as it is a “ubiquitous” problem, she added.

“We’ve got all sorts of things we are not very good at explaining. Which are the different strands. If you look at some bits of this, they involve Department for Work and Pensions, central government, which is very unresponsive locally, and some of it involves the law.

“Things like the certificates and what we need to do about death. We can’t change some of that.”

But she said the situation could be improved by helping people understand how to access services.

The ageing well steering group will look at these issues and look at finding solutions.

“Perhaps we could ask to bring back the action plan developed about what we are going to do so people going through our services genuinely feel supported by us collectively. We haven’t got it right and thank you for drawing that to our attention.

“It’s really tough. This issue is about how we communicate better and help people navigate what, not because of us, but the way the system has been designed.

“It’s a really complex system. You look at it and think of that old story where somebody stops someone outside a town and asks ‘how do I get to Dublin?

“And they say, ‘well if you’re going to Dublin you wouldn’t start here!’ We wouldn’t design the system we currently have but we can do the best we can within the system.”