FREEZING NHS spending to invest in care at home for elderly people would help cut unnecessary hospital admissions and free up ward staff to focus on other priorities, according to private care providers.

Ranald Mair, chief executive of Scottish Care, said freezing investment in the NHS was politically taboo, but the money could improve the quality of life for people in their own homes and reduce demand on hospitals.

Speaking ahead of the publication of a report on care at home for the elderly, he said: "The evidence suggests that maintaining NHS expenditure whilst cutting social care, simply results in more unnecessary admissions to hospital."

The report, Home Delivery, commissioned by Scottish Care, the representative body for the country's independent social care services, was written by social care consultant Barry McLeod and Dr Mari Mair, former advisor to Glasgow City Council and Cosla.

It highlights startling statistics about the relative costs of NHS care and care at home. When a pensioner suffers a fall and ends up in hospital they end up with an 11.8-day average stay, costing the NHS almost £5,000, it says, but the same money could pay for a person to stay for more than nine weeks in a residential care home or give care at home for a week to more than 27 OAPs.

The report says so-called bed-blocking accounted for more than 91 bed days in the quarter April to June 2014, at a cost which could have provided a year's average care at home package for 4,042 clients or a year's residential care for over 1,300 clients.

The authors identify "great potential" in terms of money spent on delayed discharges or bed blocking being diverted into services in the community.

But it says care at home in the community is currently is under pressure, with more hours of care at home being provided but a dramatic fall in the number of people who receive public funding to meet non-personal support needs such as cleaning and shopping.

Councils contract out 60 per cent of all care home services, whereas they used to provide 70 per cent in-house, the report states. However staff are largely part-time, older and pay rates are lower than the Scottish average.

Mr Mair said: "It could be the time for politicians to tackle this head-on. With an increasingly ageing population, the problems will get worse as demands on the NHS increase. Investment in social care provides the public purse with more bang for our buck."

Mr Mair said: "The Scottish Government concedes that care services in Scotland are under considerable strain as resources are squeezed and the demographic challenge increases.

"The Scottish Government has made additional funding available to the new Health and Social Care Partnerships to tackle the problem. But we need to ensure that social care provision including Care at Home and Housing Support is adequately funded on a sustainable basis."

He said the government's target in 2011 had been to double the capacity in home care over a 10-year period, but progress had been slow: "We are now behind schedule on this target and need a national plan to ensure we have the right quality and quantity of home care going forward."

The report will be published today at Scottish Care's Care at Home and Housing Support Conference in Glasgow.