Benefits of disability equipment

There are many benefits of providing disability equipment correctly. Disability equipment offers the potential to:

• promote independence, safety, social inclusion, quality of life, improved end of life care;
• help to give elderly and disabled people control over their own lives;
• cut unscheduled hospital admissions;
• cut Accident & Emergency attendance;
• reduce the length of hospital stay;
• reduce ‘bed blocking’ in hospitals;
• assist with the delivery of many quality outcomes for children and adults;
• assist with funding of long term care by avoiding the need for care home admissions;
• improve early years development;
• play a key role in the delivery of early intervention and prevention strategies, and in avoiding crisis admissions to high cost services.

“The Code does more than just unravel a complex system. It demonstrates time and again that effective and timely provision of equipment meets key priorities of central government in health and social care – in particular, prevention of problems, independence of the individual and cost effectiveness.”

Michael Mandelstam – leading writer and adviser on social and health care law

Public sector disability equipment services issue approximately 14 million pieces of disability equipment to 4 million service users every year in the UK; many of these service users are wholly dependent on equipment for their day to day activities. This demonstrates how important it is to get equipment services right.

‘If a medicine was discovered with a similar cost-profile, it would be hailed as the wonder drug of the age’

Audit Commission (2000 & 2002). Fully Equipped: London.