- RCN survey: “Harrowing” corridor care testimony reveals a government leaving staff with “hands tied behind their backs”
- Cole-Hamilton comments on embargoed RCN report on overcrowding
RCN survey: “Harrowing” corridor care testimony reveals a government leaving staff with “hands tied behind their backs”
Responding to a Royal College of Nursing survey which shows that two-thirds of NHS nursing staff are saying they are delivering care in over-crowded or unsuitable places such as corridors, converted cupboards and even car parks on a daily basis, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:
This report is harrowing. To think that patients are receiving desperately needed care in car parks and dying patients are being left to fend for themselves in corridors should make us sick to our stomachs.
The government has left staff fighting this crisis with their hands tied behind their backs. Ministers’ failure to take any meaningful action to limit this suffering is shocking.
The Conservative Party’s legacy of NHS neglect was beyond shameful but we now need to see Ministers get their act together and finally take steps to bring an end to this catastrophic situation.
The Health Secretary must produce an emergency plan to get more beds into hospitals to return bed occupancy rates to safe levels and to bring forward a pandemic-style emergency recruitment campaign to bring staff out of retirement and back into the workforce.
Cole-Hamilton comments on embargoed RCN report on overcrowding
Responding to the embargoed RCN report into overcrowding in Scotland’s NHS, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:
This is a harrowing account of the pressures that nurses are facing in their workplaces.
Caring for patients in corridors, cupboards and car parks has become disturbingly common.
The Health Secretary should make a statement to Parliament making clear that this is unacceptable and he will be making the necessary resources available to get healthy patients home and sick ones the standard of treatment they deserve.
14 Comments
Might the L D party produce a prompt indicative plan to make hospitals reasonably well staffed and reasonably well accommodated instead of taking the easy, and probably ineffective, approach of merely complaining?
Might presenting assertive alternatives to the present HMG approach of officially endorsed delay provide an effective opposition?
It’s not just physical beds and hospital infrastructure. There’s not any more staff. So the only solution is to do less of something. Most NHS treatments are calculated by NICE to deliver a certain number of quality equivalent life years QALYS per £. So adjust the QALYS per £ up till the system can cope. Then think about the longer term staff and buildings needed. What NHS health care can the UK afford?
For once I actually agree with Steve, to the extent that coming up with a plan to fix the problem would be a lot more constructive than simply complaining about it.
The trouble is, I’m not sure we’re yet prepared to face up to the underlying cause of the problem in the NHS: If your approach to healthcare is to provide whatever people think they need completely free of charge, then demand will always keep growing without any limit (strictly speaking, it will grow until the marginal benefit is zero, but for something as important to people as healthcare, we will almost never reach that point). That means that, no matter how much money we pump in, how many doctors and nurses we employ, the NHS will always eventually end up in a crisis like the current one – until we can find a way to limit demand. That’s a very hard thing to accept, but until we can accept that, we will never be able to permanently solve the crisis in the NHS (although using huge cash injections we may be able to temporarily postpone the crisis for a few years until demand grows again, as Labour did in the early 2000’s)
@Simon R
The NHS was created at a time when what clinitians could do for people was limited. Nowadays medecine can do so much more for us. Not surprising that demand keeps on increasing.
But many people with genuine medical needs which medecine could fix (or at least make an improvement) can’t afford to contribute more financially.
Don’t we need to face up to the issue of those who could afford it paying more in taxes? And also to look for other ways of taxing – e.g. higher taxes on activities bad for the environment?
@ Simon R,
There are plenty of health care models from which to choose. Which one would you prefer? The US, French, German ……?
Most countries spend a similar % of GDP on health care as ourselves so whichever one you do choose (with one exception) isn’t going to be much different in price.
The exception is the US model which will be significantly more expensive.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268826/health-expenditure-as-gdp-percentage-in-oecd-countries/
Increasing taxes to pay for more NHS might work in the short term, but it won’t work long term because after a few years you’ll just hit that as we learn to treat, and expect to treat, more conditions, the resultant ever-growing demand for more healthcare will put the NHS back into the same crisis as today. Except it’ll be eating an even higher share of Government spending. And there’s a limit to how much you can keep taxing ‘people who can afford it‘ (which I suspect in practice means, ‘please tax someone else to pay for it all, not me‘ 😉 )
At some point we need a national conversation about how much of GDP we’re willing to spend on healthcare and what we can reasonably get for that money, as well as what the most efficient way of organising it all is. Personally I think the least bad long term solution is to decide on a somewhat restricted set of things that we will always treat free, funded by taxation (things like infectious diseases, accidents and emergencies, and some chronic conditions), and have some European-style insurance scheme for everything else.
@ Simon R. I hope you stay healthy.
” there’s a limit to how much you can keep taxing ‘people who can afford it‘ (which I suspect in practice means, ‘please tax someone else to pay for it all, not me‘ ”
Simon R – I’m relieved you said you ‘suspect’.
As a reasonably comfortably off pensioner I can’t see why I shouldn’t be charged something towards NHS services. And I would have thought the simplest way of doing that is via an income-related deduction from my pensions. HMRC seems to know all about them after all.
But we’d be better off if the government grasped the nettle of dealing with tax avoidance by the wealthy who have access to accountants who know all the loopholes.
The goverment needs to start closing the loopholes. If it doesn’t do so the number of loopholes available to the wealthy will keep on increasing.
Ideally one would start all over again but that’s not practicable. The government could perhaos focus on aome aspect of income particularly susceptible to tax avoidance.
And please don’t use the mantra that tax avoidance is legal – I know it is – and that is what the problem is.
Having lived in Australia I do have some experience of how their system works.
Doctor’s appointments are notionally free providing the doctor’s practice agree to the price the Government offers. This is known as ‘bulk billing’. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to find a practice who agrees to accept the offer. Therefore in practice patients have to pay out the equivalent of £30 or so and claim the bulk bill component back (~£20) by queuing up at a Govt office. Possibly this has been changed to an on-line system recently but I suspect the Govt wants to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to make a claim.
The other notable difference with the NHS is that you can effectively jump the queue by paying to have your op done in a public hospital. So when I damaged my knee in a sporting accident the choice was to wait for several years to get it operated on for free or pay about £3k to jump the queue. I felt bad about that but as I was in some discomfort…..
So all these options are possible. The levying of the £25 fee does make it easier to get a doctors appointment in Australia than it is here. I suppose it does put people off going to the doctors if they have a runny nose. On the other hand it might put off some people going if they have serious pains in their chest.
@ Nonconformistradical “As a reasonably comfortably off pensioner I can’t see why I shouldn’t be charged something towards NHS services”.
But you are being charged, Noncon, because you pay tax on your pension.
Are you really saying that folk on benefits or low wages should be charged for seeing a doc with what that may imply in failing to stop the spreading of a virus by deterring attendance ? Even the ‘candle ends’ Victorian Liberals knew the necessity of Chadwick installing drains etc., to cut back illness and infection.
@David Raw
“Are you really saying that folk on benefits or low wages should be charged for seeing a doc…….”
No that is absolutely what I’m NOT saying.
I am saying that I believe that public finances have a possibly major shortfall arising from tax avoidance by the wealthy. If that shortfall was addressed then there might be a chance of the NHS being better able (financially) to address the medical needs of the people.
I want to see the authorities go after the wealthy avoiding tax – which is where I personally suspect there is a problem.
@Peter Martin
“The other notable difference with the NHS is that you can effectively jump the queue by paying to have your op done in a public hospital. So when I damaged my knee in a sporting accident the choice was to wait for several years to get it operated on for free or pay about £3k to jump the queue. I felt bad about that but as I was in some discomfort…..”
I’m in some discomfort too and hobbling about with a stick but I’m not going to try to jump the queue. I might be able to afford to do that but that could mean someone with a more urgent need would have to wait.
@ Nonconformist radical That’s a bit more like it, Noncon. I would expect nothing less with your name.
The French system charges those who visit the doctor BUT….
If my memory still works…When I lived there (between 1998 and 2014) the amount was 23Euros..The French government refunded 14 Euros and my company health insurance returned 7 Euros…The remaining 2 Euros went into a national “pot” to cover those unemployed, disabled, etc. who were deemed unable to afford the initial 23 Euros…
The system worked well..An appointment the same day or at worst the day after; a specialist/surgeon appointment with a week (my hernia operation was carried out within a week of visiting my GP)..
The French spend a comparable percentage of GDP on their health service and yet it is infinitely better..WHY?
BTW..My French GP friend tells me that there have been increasing problems with staff retention and dissatisfaction over hours and salaries BUT she says the system is NOT in danger of collapse as several articles in the UK media have claimed….Other French friends who are patients say they have no problems seeing GPs and specialists, etc..