Statement on A&E figures from Dr Louise Irvine of the National Health Action Party (who is standing against Jeremy Hunt in South West Surrey at the general election): The worst ever A&E waiting figures, hospitals around the country declaring major incidents and having to cancel operations and turn away patients. This is our NHS brought to its knees by this governments programme of NHS underfunding, cuts, closures and chaotic management of our NHS. This is a problem thats been brewing for years. Patients are now paying the price. While A&E attendance numbers are higher, this doesnt explain the severity of the current crisis. So we need to stop blaming patients for turning up at A&E unnecessarily. If you look closely at the figures, the number of people attending A&E in December was actually lower than in the summer. In the weeks ending Dec 21 and 28th, there were 289,530and 262,879 people attending A&E. Both of these are LESS than the number of people attending A&E throughout the months of June and July (week ending 22 June there 298,955 attendances and in the week ending 20 July there were 298,711 attendances.) And yet the four-hour target was maintained in the summer but was breached in December, with the figure for the week before Christmas the lowest ever since records began in 2004. The real issue is the lack of capacity of hospitals to treat, admit and care for patients, causing back pressure in A&E. This is seen in the stupendously high figures for 4-12 hour trolley waits - over 12,000 people left languishing on trolleys in the week ending December 21st, the highest number since records began. Sick patients are stuck in A&E as there are insufficient doctors to treat them and cuts in the number of hospital beds mean they can’t be admitted onto wards. Ambulances are then unable to offload their own patients as A&E units are full. Meanwhile cuts to social care budgets mean there are more elderly people needing hospital admission and then suffering delayed discharge due to a lack of community care. The governments refusal to publish the Risk Register which would have helped NHS staff plan for the crisis has made things even worse. Weve known about our growing and ageing population yet the government has failed to plan for this either. Instead theyve wasted billions of pounds on an NHS reorganisation that no one wanted and no one voted for and which wastes billions more on the bureaucracy of outsourcing and privatising NHS services. We spend the least on healthcare as a proportion of GDP of all G7 countries. Ring-fencing a budget that doesnt meet our needs is meaningless. Every single one of these problems can be traced back to the door of Downing Street. There has been an abysmal failure of Government to avert this crisis and invest properly in the NHS. £700 million thrown at it to try to avert a crisis is too little too late. You cant train more doctors and nurses overnight. David Cameron claims hell protect the NHS. But its a myth that the Tories are protecting the NHS budget. It has not risen in line with rising population and healthcare needs. And its a myth that the Tories will protect the NHS. Given the evidence in front of their eyes, I cant imagine why anyone in this country would believe the NHS is safe in Tory hands.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:50:15 +0000
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