2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 112,334
- 52,581
- 2,290
Yep......the only reason it has lasted this long is that Britain has been sponging off of the U.S. since the war...
As performance deteriorates, correcting the failures of yesterday becomes the first requirement of today, leaving even less time and fewer resources to deal with today’s problems, which continue to be more than the NHS can handle. So the rate of decline accelerates. And breaking points appear. As facilities and staff are stretched further and further, continuing to provide a service but an ever more inadequate one, they eventually reach a point where there is no more slack and the NHS simply runs out of capacity. Often there is no space in nursing and care homes to discharge patients to. Which can mean no hospital beds are available, as those patients are still in them. So you can’t admit that critically ill patient. There are no spare staff in A&E, so patients who need to be seen immediately have to wait hours. There are no more ambulances, so patients who need to get to hospital in minutes take an hour, and might die.
Figures compiled by NHS England found that in November the health service missed all targets for Accident and Emergency (A&E) care, operations and cancer treatment.
A record low 71 percent of patients who attended a hospital-based A&E unit were seen and discharged, admitted or transferred within the four hours waiting-time target. Not a single major A&E department in England met the four-hour target, with 88,923 patients waiting more than four hours from a decision to admit to hospital admission—64 percent higher than last November. Compared with 258 in November 2018, 1,112 patients were forced to wait more than 12 hours, a 331 percent increase.
There were 2.14 million attendances in November 2019, 5.2 percent more than in November 2018. Hospitals are running at near total capacity, with bed occupancy at 95 percent. This is well above the 85 percent considered safe by doctors.
Winter brings more people into hospital, meaning the NHS running at levels that cannot be safe. Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards stated his concern that bed occupancy was at “a level which will make it near impossible to admit many patients in need on to the right ward.”
Cases of flu are being reported earlier than last year, while norovirus cases are already double what they were in 2018, according to Miriam Deakin, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, representing NHS trusts. Earlier this month, a spate of norovirus cases resulted in the NHS having to close more than 1,100 beds. The Guardian noted that Southampton general hospital had to shut 32 beds in five wards, and closed an entire ward to new admissions, while Reading’s Royal Berkshire hospital shut four wards to contain the virus.
As performance deteriorates, correcting the failures of yesterday becomes the first requirement of today, leaving even less time and fewer resources to deal with today’s problems, which continue to be more than the NHS can handle. So the rate of decline accelerates. And breaking points appear. As facilities and staff are stretched further and further, continuing to provide a service but an ever more inadequate one, they eventually reach a point where there is no more slack and the NHS simply runs out of capacity. Often there is no space in nursing and care homes to discharge patients to. Which can mean no hospital beds are available, as those patients are still in them. So you can’t admit that critically ill patient. There are no spare staff in A&E, so patients who need to be seen immediately have to wait hours. There are no more ambulances, so patients who need to get to hospital in minutes take an hour, and might die.
NHS failure is inevitable – and it will shock those responsible into action | Jan Filochowski
Facilities and staff are being stretched to a breaking point that will take costly short-term measures to fix, says former NHS trust CEO Jan Filochowski
www.theguardian.com
Figures compiled by NHS England found that in November the health service missed all targets for Accident and Emergency (A&E) care, operations and cancer treatment.
A record low 71 percent of patients who attended a hospital-based A&E unit were seen and discharged, admitted or transferred within the four hours waiting-time target. Not a single major A&E department in England met the four-hour target, with 88,923 patients waiting more than four hours from a decision to admit to hospital admission—64 percent higher than last November. Compared with 258 in November 2018, 1,112 patients were forced to wait more than 12 hours, a 331 percent increase.
There were 2.14 million attendances in November 2019, 5.2 percent more than in November 2018. Hospitals are running at near total capacity, with bed occupancy at 95 percent. This is well above the 85 percent considered safe by doctors.
Winter brings more people into hospital, meaning the NHS running at levels that cannot be safe. Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards stated his concern that bed occupancy was at “a level which will make it near impossible to admit many patients in need on to the right ward.”
Cases of flu are being reported earlier than last year, while norovirus cases are already double what they were in 2018, according to Miriam Deakin, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, representing NHS trusts. Earlier this month, a spate of norovirus cases resulted in the NHS having to close more than 1,100 beds. The Guardian noted that Southampton general hospital had to shut 32 beds in five wards, and closed an entire ward to new admissions, while Reading’s Royal Berkshire hospital shut four wards to contain the virus.
Collapse of UK National Health Service threatened as Johnson government readies further onslaught
Figures compiled by NHS England found that in November the health service missed all targets for Accident and Emergency (A&E) care, operations and cancer treatment.
www.wsws.org