Jeremy Hunt stated that the NHS could swallow up billions of dollars in taxpayer cash unless its staffing crisis was fixed
Jeremy Hunt today warned that the NHS would swallow up more taxpayer money if it doesn’t deal with its staffing crisis.
According to the former Health Secretary, the suggestion that money be spent on the health system to address backlogs and delay treatment had “poisoned intelligent discourse” about the solutions.
Even with record funding, the NHS’s waiting list for emergency and routine care is at its highest ever level. There are increasing reports about patients being killed in hospital corridors or ambulances, and this is despite the fact that the NHS has received unprecedented funding.
The pandemic was also affecting NHS England, which had a shortage of approximately 100,000 workers, 44,000 nurses, and nearly 9,000 doctors across almost every speciality.
In September, NHS bosses were given a £30bn handout and the Government has pledged to generate billions more each year by hiking National Insurance.
But Mr Hunt warned the money will be wasted on the salaries of locum doctors and agency nurses without an official plan to increase staffing levels.
He said to BBC Radio 4 Today: “The debate over money has poisoned intelligence about the NHS.
‘The system is geared up to say to ministers “give us more money and we’ll give you the things you want”.
‘When in reality, unless you expand the capacity of the system to do things, principally by training up and recruiting more doctors and nurses, it doesn’t matter how much extra money you throw at it, you wont get the improvements you’re looking for.’
According to official data, the NHS waiting lists for treatment at routine hospitals in England have reached 5.83million. Some 1.6million more Britons were waiting for elective surgery — such as hip and keen operations — at the end of September compared to the start of the pandemic
While the NHS has always struggled to respond quickly enough for medical emergencies of Category 2, such as strokes, severe burns, and other serious illnesses, patients have been waiting almost an hour for an ambulance since calling 99 in the past few months.
Categor 1 emergencies are the most life-threatening and serious. Patients have had to wait nine minutes for an ambulance. That is well over the NHS target of seven minutes
A record number of 5.8 million people are currently on the NHS waiting list for surgery or hospital treatment in England. Their conditions continue to deteriorate.
A paramedic admitted that patients are at risk because the ambulance response time to heart attack or stroke victims is nearly one hour.
And the number of people dying at home is up by one third since before the pandemic, and those who do make it into hospital for care are discharged faster than ever to free up beds, long before they’ve made a full recovery.
Experts claim that the crisis is being driven by unsustainable demand, staff shortages, and an insufficient number of beds.
The UK is not the only country facing a staffing crisis, as Mr Hunt highlighted in an article last month. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there’s a shortage of doctors worldwide.
He wrote in The New Statesman: “In the short-term, we should throw our kitchen sink at getting additional doctors and nurses into this system.”
He called for the relaxation of all restrictions on immigration to qualified doctors and for generous incentives to lure them.
He stated that the NHS and its care system would be ruined without overseas clinical staff and that we must welcome them.
“But, we must recognize there is an element moral hazard to this approach: Such recruits often come form developing countries where they are even more needed.
“So, dependence on migration from poorer countries shouldn’t be a long term strategy.”
It came after a damning report revealed up to 160,000 emergency patients each year may be harmed due to the time between them being handed over to A&E staff.
Of these, about 12,000 suffer ‘severe harm’, according to the document written by NHS ambulance bosses in England.
HM Treasury data shows the NHS received £100.4billion in 2010/11 and its budget had grown steadily until 2019. In 2020, the NHS was given £129.7billion of core funding for its usual services, which was topped up with an extra £18billion to help with the pressures from the pandemic. For 2021/22 the Treasury said the health service is set to receive £136.1billion pounds of core funding, as well as £3billion to help with the Covid recovery
A record number of 999 calls were made in England in October with 1,012,143 urgent calls for medical help made. These calls were answered in record time of 56 seconds.
In January 2010, the NHS employed 1.2million people and it now employs 1.3million — a 15.4 per cent rise. The increase includes 30,000 additional nurses, health visitors, and 2,500 midwives. There are also 770 ambulance personnel. While the number salaried GPs have increased 65 percent to 11,000, it has fallen by 27 percent to 19,250.
A woman died last month from a heart attack while waiting to be admitted in an ambulance at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
The woman had been waiting for one hour and twenty minutes for a bed in A&E when her heart stopped. Half an hour later, she was gone. This incident is currently under investigation.
Last week, it was revealed that a woman suffered a fatal heart attack while waiting to be admitted at the James Paget hospital.
Officials stated that she had been in the waiting room for over two hours. She was then moved to an emergency department where she suffered cardiac arrest.
NHS leaders have written to trusts throughout the country asking for them to eliminate ambulance queues from their hospitals. These are putting patient safety at risk and slowing down response times.
According to shocking figures, heart attack and stroke victims have now had to wait on average for 55 minutes before an ambulance arrives. According to Doctors, the shocking figures prove that the NHS has fallen on its knees.
Another example of an escalating problem was the sight of nine ambulances queuing at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham around 8 p.m. Saturday.
The UK is feeling the pressures. Ambulances have been diverted from one Northern Ireland hospital today due to ‘extreme’ pressures on its wards. To help Scotland, the Army was already drafted.