Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Hospitals are overwhelmed this winter, that is true, but they are being run down to make room for private healthcare.
Before the invention of email, the Post Office took on thousands of students every December to help deliver the predictable spate of Christmas mail, but it was never called "the Post Office Christmas crisis". So why should the equally predictable winter spike in illness be an annual "winter crisis" in the NHS? Why should opening extra wards and hiring more nurses from abroad be a drama? After all, since 2000 well over 100,000 nurses have come from abroad. Don't hospitals plan for fluctuating levels of need over the annual cycle?
The short answer is that they do, but they no longer have sufficient funds to implement the plans. Since 2010 the government claims to have protected the NHS by keeping its real income stable. Even if this were true the rising healthcare needs of a growing and ageing population unmatched by any increase in resources would by now have brought it close to breakdown. But the real income of NHS hospitals is not being kept constant. It is being cut by 4% year on year, the theory being that this will make hospitals more efficient by forcing them to do more with less
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/12/nhs-crisis-winter-threat-cuts
Before the invention of email, the Post Office took on thousands of students every December to help deliver the predictable spate of Christmas mail, but it was never called "the Post Office Christmas crisis". So why should the equally predictable winter spike in illness be an annual "winter crisis" in the NHS? Why should opening extra wards and hiring more nurses from abroad be a drama? After all, since 2000 well over 100,000 nurses have come from abroad. Don't hospitals plan for fluctuating levels of need over the annual cycle?
The short answer is that they do, but they no longer have sufficient funds to implement the plans. Since 2010 the government claims to have protected the NHS by keeping its real income stable. Even if this were true the rising healthcare needs of a growing and ageing population unmatched by any increase in resources would by now have brought it close to breakdown. But the real income of NHS hospitals is not being kept constant. It is being cut by 4% year on year, the theory being that this will make hospitals more efficient by forcing them to do more with less
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/12/nhs-crisis-winter-threat-cuts