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But by the time of the coalition government in 2010, it had become impossible to do this. Things were belatedly put back on an even keel by optimising deployment of the resource injections.
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Now do the job.” He might also have added a helpful reminder to use the money wisely.īy 2006, the NHS was in financial meltdown: resources had increased but demand had soared. As John Reid, former secretary of state put it: “We’ve given you the money. The increases were undoubtedly generous but accompanied by a foolhardy view that because of that practically anything was possible. Something fundamental changed with the Blair/Brown resource injection into the NHS in the early 2000s.
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Yet those responsible for the NHS still refuse to act, blinded by their own delusional optimism, or perhaps wilful deception.įrom its inception, the NHS worked on a fixed-cash limit, which placed limitations on what was provided. Waits will get longer and some patients will die before being treated, while others will become permanently disabled and lose their livelihoods. If nothing is done to arrest this, the decline will accelerate. The shortfall in money and staff needed to meet demand and the parallel shortfall in social care still exist. It was displaced from headlines by the EU referendum, and last winter’s deterioration was concealed due to the fact that the NHS broke tradition by not publishing national weekly performance information for that period. ĭespite this, news of the NHS meltdown has been buried. This month, the Care Quality Commission suggested this problem is reaching a tipping point. The delays are not only unpleasant, they waste a lot of money and lead to worse care. The number of delayed discharges from hospital, which have been a big problem for years, are also increasing at an alarming rate.Nearly all trusts finished 2015-16 in a deficit and have remained there. In 2015-16, the deficit of a single trust, Barts Health, was £134m and the NHS deficit was £2.45bn – a 20-fold increase in two years. Figures published this month show the numerb of patients waiting in ambulances outside A&E for more than an hour, unable to be taken into the hospital, has doubled in a year. The number of patients waiting over four hours has doubled – two million in the past year, with nearly a quarter of a million in February alone, a 400% increase on the February figure five years ago. In two years, the key performance marker, A&E waits, has worsened from more than 95% of patients waiting four hours or less to under 90%.Three examples demonstrate the steep gradient of decline: The hyper-careful General Medical Council recently highlighted how serious the situation has become with its unprecedented declaration of “a state of unease in the medical profession”.