The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published their annual assessment of health and social care in England.

State of Care looks at the trends, shares examples of good and outstanding care and highlights where care standards need to improve.

The CQC website said: “This year’s report finds some people can easily access good care, but others cannot access the services they need, experience disjointed care, or only have access to providers with poor services.

“By looking at local health and care systems, we found that it was for harder for people to access services in the community in places where services failed to work well together. In turn, this can lead to unnecessary admissions to hospital, putting extra pressure on acute and mental health services.”

The assessment looked at five factors that affect sustainability of good care for people, where were access to care and support, quality of care for people, workforce to deliver care, capacity to meet demand and funding and commissioning.

It was found the overall quality of care in major health and care sectors has improved slightly, but the report also claims too many people are receiving care that is not up to standard.

The report commented on rising demand from both an ageing population and the increasing numbers of people living with complex, chronic or multiple conditions such as dementia.

Funding was highlighted as a contributing factor which are well-known, the report says: “Care providers need to be able to plan provision of services for populations with the right resources, so good funding and commissioning structures and decision-making should be in place to help boost the ability of health and social care services to improve.”

CQC’s assessment said there were improvements in safety in adult social care services and among GP practices, but NHS acute hospital and mental health services need to improve substantially.