71.3% (against a standard target of 75%)
of red 1 calls being responded to within 8
minutes. This is the eleventh month in a
row that this target has not been met.
NHS ‘bulging
at the seams’
Official figures published recently for the financial year 2015-16
recorded the deficit for NHS Trusts in England as £2.45bn, this
being £461m higher than expected. This overspend has spiralled
upwards since the £115m deficit reported for the financial year
2013-14.
Controversially, Dr Kailash Chand, deputy
chair of the British Medical Association
(BMA), has recently stated publicly that
“[the] government is deliberately setting
up the NHS to fail, that’s clear. The whole
agenda of the Tory party is to wash its
hands of the NHS. The biggest evidence
is that they are starving the NHS of the
funding it needs so that eventually they will
say that it’s unaffordable.”
The BMA held their annual conference
earlier this month, where medical
practitioners raised their fears for patients’
welfare and the risks patients are being
exposed to. Dr Mary McCarthy, a GP from
Shropshire, speaking at the conference
expressed her concerns at the apparent
lack of hospital beds in the UK and how
inpatient capacity is steadily being eroded.
Dr McCarthy went on to compare the UK’s
inpatient capacity, which has less than 300
beds for every 100,000 people, with that of
our European counterparts. The Republic
of Ireland has around 500 for every
100,000, France over 700 and Germany
over 800. Dr McCarthy explained that she
believes our hospitals are “bulging at the
seams”.
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Representatives at the BMA conference
also heard from speaker Dr Michael
Hardingham, an ear, nose and throat
surgeon from Cheltenham who put
forward his view that “patients are being
harmed because they are being sent
home as there are no beds available.” He
went on to recall working within the NHS
in the 1960’s where he was faced with two
and sometimes three times the number of
cases in a day than he currently sees.
A poll carried out by the BMA before
the conference found that eight in 10 of
the 1,200 representatives surveyed are
worried about the future of our NHS.
This is hardly surprising with NHS targets
increasingly not being met. Waiting times
for A&E units saw an all time low in the
first quarter of this year. A&E units have a
target that 95% of patients are to be seen
within 4 hours. However, the Guardian
reported last month that in the past 18
months, this 95% target had been met
only once.
The NHS performance statistics for
April 2016 also saw a failure to meet
ambulance response times, with only
Stephen Dalton, Interi m Chief Executive
for NHS Confederation, commenting on
the monthly NHS performance figures
published by NHS England said: “The
NHS is straining to deliver a high standard
of care in the face of huge financial and
demand pressures. . . This is an urgent
call to Government to quicken the pace
and enable NHS and Local Authority
leaders to work together to transform
health and care services. The needs
of people have changed and demand
continues to outstrip resource. Unless
we break the cycle, we will continue to
see performance results that expose the
problem, not offer any solutions.”
The Royal College of Nursing conference
which also took place earlier this month
heard Janet Youd, the chair of the Royal
College of Nursing’s Emergency Care
association, raise her concerns that more
than half of sick children brought to A&E
are not dealt with “in a timely manner”.
She added: “There are some emergency
departments that I wouldn’t feel safe
sending my children or family to.”
Janet Davies, Chief Executive and
General Secretary for the Royal College
of Nursing, recently described the current
situation of the NHS as an “endless
winter”. She explained: “Having once
been the preserve of the worst weeks of
winter, overwhelming pressure and major
incidents have sadly become the new
normal in our hospitals. . . It is time we
had a serious look at how long hospitals
can continue to function when they are
consistently under-funded and understaffed.”
Ministers are quick to defend the current
state of the NHS by rejecting these claims
and pointing out that more money than
ever is being invested, meaning that the
NHS is the safest health system in the
world. They compare present figures to
those some six years ago and note that
6,400 extra patients are now being treated
in A&E and 16,000 more diagnostic tests
are being performed. Ministers note
that patient experience has improved
in coming years, with 85% of patients
reporting that the care they received
was ‘good’ or better. However, this
does not reflect the views of the medical
practitioners who are at the forefront,
providing care within the NHS nor those
of our clients who have been put at risk
and failed by the NHS
By Estella Hlisnikowski