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The documents should also encompass how, where and when a patient wants to die, rather than simply giving "sanitised" instructions on when to withold treatment, Dr Patel suggested.

This could eventually lead to clinics like Dignitas operating in the UK, rather than forcing people to visit Switzerland to end their life, he said.

Dr Patel, former head of the Priory Clinics, is currently chairman of HC-One, a company which was formed to take over the running of 249 Southern Cross care homes when the firm collapsed in 2011.

The Labour Party donor was nominated for a peerage in 2006, but withdrew himself from consideration amid accusations of involvement in the "cash for honours" scandal. He denied any wrongdoing.

Speaking ahead of a keynote address at the National Care Homes Congress today, Dr Patel said too many older people with conditions like dementia and Parkinson's die in "completely impersonal surroundings" in hospital.

Many are denied the chance to die in comfort at home because they are forced onto wards by official processes which ensure treatment cannot be witheld, he explained.

"When you look at severe, chronic conditions like dementia, Parkinson's disease, motor neurone disease, where the progressive nature of it is going to be so dreadful and everyone knows what the natural progression is, then why can't we make a grown up decision how we want to go," he said.

"In the past 100 years we have found so many ways to live and we live well, but actually we die really badly. If we are going to have the choice to keep alive and find ways to enjoy being alive, we should have the choice of how and when we die, if we can."

The number of people aged 90 and over in England if expected to rise by 146 per cent in the next 20 years, meaning health and social care will place a greater burden on the taxpayer, with proportionally fewer younger people paying for it.

Dr Patel said the argument for the right to die should come strictly from an "ethical and human perspective" but acknowledged that it could also have a financial impact.

"If as people we think this is a higher ground to take as a society, then it is the right thing to do, the economic reasons around that should not drive it," he said. "Once people agree this is the way they want to go, [in terms of] the financial resources what will be, will be."