There is no mistaking the depth of the crisis faced by the health service. But how much are we prepared to pay, who will pay it – and what exactly will it buy?
It has been a terrible day for the NHS in England and Wales (and not a lot better in Scotland, where there are also complaints about long waits, or Northern Ireland). But it was even worse for the health service’s political masters. An unprecedented letter was sent to the prime minister by 68 of the most senior emergency medicine specialists from across England and Wales. It warned in the starkest terms of the extent of the crisis in A&E caused by “severe and chronic” underfunding: some care was not safe. Treatment was taking 10-12 hours from the decision to admit to finding a bed. For want of that bed, people were dying on trolleys. Patients were sleeping in clinics. Sometimes 50 patients at a time were waiting in emergency departments. They need more staff, more beds and more cash for social care.
Earlier, the body representing all NHS providers warned that the funding crisis had driven hospitals to a watershed where hard choices were becoming unavoidable. As they have for more than a year, most hospitals are breaching their constitutional obligations. The warning accompanied statistics showing that only 77.3% of A&E patients met the four hours target in December. Performance is already worse than in its worst month, January 2017. It the worst since records began, and it is very likely to get worse still. Theresa May suggested to reporters that it was because of the flu epidemic. This is not the flu: it is a system-wide crisis brought about by seven years of mounting austerity. Oh, and that is getting worse, too. The official defence is that this is not a crisis, because there is a plan. Certainly the consultants acknowledge in their letter to Downing Street that huge effort went into trying to avert a crisis. But planning can’t magic up highly trained doctors and nurses. Plans do not make hospital beds. And while vaccination helps, you can’t entirely plan your way out of the impact of flu.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2CSo4x8
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