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17 Oct 2016

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Accountability, Democracy, NHS (local)

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NHS: on the point of collapse – now ‘eternal winter’

Back to Chomsky:
“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
…

“Waiting times in A&E units in England this summer have been worse than every winter for the past 12 years bar one, figures show.

The colder months have traditionally been the most difficult for hospitals.

But pressures have grown so much that this summer saw one in 10 patients wait for over four hours in A&E during June, July and August.

Only last winter saw a worse performance since the target started in 2004, figures from NHS England showed.

During the summer months 90.6% of patients were seen in four hours. Hospitals are meant to deal with 95% in four hours.
The data also showed hospitals are missing a number of other key targets for cancer, routine operations and ambulance response times.

And the delays hospitals experienced in August discharging patients reached a record high. There were over 188,000 days of delays – a 30% rise on the same month the year before.
These delays occur when there are no services available in the community to care for frail patients on release.

Dr Mark Holland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the figures once again showed the NHS was locked in an “eternal winter”.

“The NHS is on its knees and, this winter, areas will implode around the country. There is no reserve left.
“Over the coming weeks and months, if we see a major increase in admissions due to flu or bed closures due to norovirus, we will collapse.” …”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37634687

One thought on “NHS: on the point of collapse – now ‘eternal winter’”

  1. Can anyone point me at any example of a privatisation which is beneficial in the long run?

    Or are privatisations actually just selling off the family silver to cover the fact that the UK is spending more than it is earning (or as a way to give tax cuts as a short-term bribe to the electorate)?

    And what happens when you have sold off everything?

    You have nothing left to cover the gaps in finance.

    And with privatised companies now owned by foreign ones (see electricity and water companies), prices jacked up to provide profits sent overseas, assets run down without investment in replacements, effectively the UK will no longer actually be British. So much for regaining our sovereignty.

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