Ms Richelle Flanagan:

Yes, absolutely. A lot of the people who end up in hospital with neurological conditions have many things, such as bone health and fracture risk, which can be dealt with by a community neurological rehabilitation team. Obviously, if someone ends up in hospital with a fracture, that will take much longer. It is much better to deal with these things out of the hospital. Things like orthostatic hypotension blood pressure problems can be dealt with in the community.

Things like dysphasia, swallow issues and constipation can be dealt with in the community. These are low-hanging fruit that should be dealt with in the community but we do not have the service in the community so they end up blocking the acute services and putting huge pressure on the neurologists. They are totally overrun and burned out because of the demands that are put on them, and then they do not have nurses to unlock that.