The latest monthly National Health Service (NHS) performance statistics have revealed a crisis of health service resilience that has been years in the making.
According to Nuffield Trust Deputy Director of Research Sarah Scobie, this is the result of poor political choices and underinvestment. December has seen a perfect storm of incoming shocks for the NHS, including Covid, an early and nasty flu season, and a bitter cold snap, which have all fed into a greater need for emergency care services.
One of the most alarming figures revealed by the statistics is the average response time for serious conditions such as heart attacks and strokes, which was over an hour and a half in December, over five times the 18-minute target. Additionally, there were record levels of life-threatening incidents responded to, fuelled by the impact of cold weather and sicker patients. Despite the best efforts of ambulance staff, they still face lengthy delays to handover patients safely to hospital teams, who are themselves working at capacity.
Bed occupancy has been running at unsafe and high levels throughout the winter, and long before the pandemic. Running hospitals this hot leaves them vulnerable to the types of demand spikes that have been seen in recent months. Funding to support efforts to empty beds and get people into more appropriate care outside of the hospital came too late. It is no wonder NHS staff will be struggling to juggle so many demands with so little space.
The overall waiting list, still over 7 million in total, has been stuck at this level now for a few months, but the weight of demand in December and the impact of strikes will likely have dented the ability of the service to keep waiting list numbers coming down. As Sarah Scobie concludes, the NHS should be on a journey to recovery, but the reality is that this is a crisis of health service resilience that has been years in the making and is the result of poor political choices and underinvestment.
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