AVOIDABLE hospital admissions of dementia patients are set to “skyrocket” without urgent action to address failures in social care, a charity warned yesterday. 

The Alzheimer’s Society said it has heard reports of people with dementia being rushed to hospital with avoidable kidney damage from dehydration in the last month. 

The charity released new figures obtained through freedom of information requests yesterday showing avoidable admissions were already rising before the pandemic. 

Data from 45 NHS trusts found a 27 per cent rise between 2015 and 2019 in avoidable admissions for dementia patients, from 60,023 to 76,369. 

This meant they had suffered an illness or injury, including falls,  delirium, gastroenteritis, flu chest infections or dehydration, which could have been avoided had they received better care. 

Nearly two-thirds of all emergency admissions of people with dementia in 2019 were for avoidable illnesses. 

Alzheimer’s Society chief executive officer Kate Lee warned that without urgent action “avoidable hospital admissions will skyrocket, costing the NHS millions.”

She said that the pandemic has left more people than ever fighting for scarce support. 

Decades of chronic underfunding and neglect “have led to a care system that’s inadequate and deeply unfair” and the pandemic “has exposed these failings like never before,” Ms Lee said.

She added: “People with dementia have been worst hit, accounting for over a quarter of all deaths and many more rapidly deteriorating from lockdown’s knock-on effects — family carers are exhausted.

“This cannot be the kind of society that we expect today and that we want to grow old in, never again must people affected by dementia face such devastation.”