I was troubled to read this in the FT this morning:
Health leaders are demonstrating a “troubling” lack of understanding about the harm to patients from lengthening waiting lists, a Commons spending watchdog has warned as it called for urgent action to improve National Health Service performance.
The public accounts committee said that only 38 per cent of NHS trusts were meeting the 62-day waiting time limit for cancer patients to begin treatment after an urgent referral. Meanwhile, the waiting list for elective, or non-urgent, care had increased by 1.5m since March 2013 to 4.2m in November 2018.
The FT added:
Following its inquiry, the committee said it was “concerned that the national bodies responsible for setting and managing waiting times appear to lack curiosity regarding the impact of longer waiting times on patient outcomes and on patient harm”.
And it was clear the FT was not misreporting. This came from thge Labour chair:
Meg Hillier, who chairs the committee, said that it was unacceptable that the proportion of patients being treated within NHS waiting times was continuing to spiral downwards and called on NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to regain control.
And this was also said:
The long-term funding settlement for the NHS announced by the prime minister a year ago, the NHS long-term plan published in January, and a review of waiting times standards currently under way, presented “an opportunity to get the NHS back on track in meeting waiting times standards”, the MPs said.
Normally I have a lot of time for the Public Accounts Committee. Over the last decade few committees have done better work. But this is far from its finest hour. There are three reasons why the NHS is in trouble. They are:
- The internal market, which creates massive costs and enormous inefficiencies
- A lack of funding
- Brexit, which has harmed recruitment
None of these has been corrected. The situation is getting worse by government choice. And demand is growing. NHS managers know all this. They are struggling with a dire structure created by this government, poor funding delivered by the government and Brexit which leaves 100,000 posts unfilled and demand is growing. For MPs to blame them is ridiculous: this is one where all the blame lies at the Tory (and LibDem, let's not forget) door.
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The Tory attempt to reduce Government responsibility for the NHS seems to have had an impact. It’s a conspiracy Richard in my view to undermine the NHS in the same fashion that they ran down the railways for closure and later privatisation.
This is very serious indeed, given what Trump had to say during his visit.
The Public Accounts view beggars belief. do they think NHS managers have just decided on a whim to let patients wait longer? Do they think clinicians are not aware that leaving cancer patients to wait longer impacts on the potential survival outcomes? The arrogance of these politicians is almost unbelievable.
Apportioning blame to NHS management rather than to the Government leaves me wondering if they are all idiots, or whether they are happy to collude with the “”need” to privatise the NHS because it is so inefficient” story.
I don’t remember seeing a single headline about the introduction of gross inefficiency when Hunt stopped all elective surgery in the last winter emergency.
Perhaps some research into how many of these politicians are linked to private healthcare / staff agencies etc would be revealing. It is no longer possible to attribute this all to cock up rather than conspiracy.
This was my reply to Roy Lilley of NHS Managers.net, who appeared to be letting Hunt off the hook.
“For the first time I strongly disagree with you. Here are just some reasons:
Hunt lied about the data supporting the 7 day week, which is still in his Mandate to NHSE. This destroyed any credibility with the JDs.
The money was very badly misspent and wasted on targets and cost-cutting policies that actually increased the overall operational costs by the need for rework, corrections and neglect of social care and GPs (where most demand is generated). In DTOCs alone, Nicholson’s cost-cutting wheeze increased the costs of transfers within 7 years while increasing the number of transfer delays by 38% in 2015-2017, with the costs shooting through the roof.
The same phenomenon occurred in A&E.
Nicholson left and Hunt introduced the fox into the hen house, Simon Stevens, who began deliberately dissembling the NHS through persistent restructuring.
He neglected manpower planning while ensuring a loss of trainee nurses by removing the bursaries. The number of agency nurses and and their associated costs shot up. The NHS is now 40,000 short.
Stevens continued the privatisation process, even giving further contracts to firms that had already failed dismally, throwing good money after very bad money, including PFI’s.
The NHS is now at a tipping point.
This is leadership?”
The MPs should know this!
Thanks