NHS will not survive without extra cash, health service leaders claim
Our work on the development of a new national centre for rural health and care – let me know if you want more information – has given us a number of insights about the rural manifestations of this issue and helps us appreciate the drivers for the challenges facing the NHS set out in the second part of this article which sets out the issues.
NHS chiefs have demanded more money for health service, saying the service is no longer sustainable, with a “desperate” need for a vision for the future.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said extra funds and “bold decisions” were needed to deal with an “inexorable” rise in demand from an ageing population
Too many children were being left to wait six months for specialist care, he said, while the health service “turned our backs” on routine waiting list targets.
Speaking to the organisation’s annual conference in Liverpool, he said an urgent cash injection was needed, calling for a GDP target to be set for health spending.
Mr Dickson said: “On the money, the message is simple: we do not currently have the resources to deliver what the public expects. In England, health spending per head has been flat since 2009 and has fallen slightly elsewhere in the UK while demand has risen inexorably.
[Why is the NHS in trouble?]:
An ageing population. There are one million more people over the age of 65 than five years ago
Cuts to budgets for social care. While the NHS budget has been protected, social services for home helps and other care have fallen by 11 per cent in five years
This has caused record levels of bedblocking, meaning elderly people with no medical need to be in hospital are stuck there. Latest quarterly show occupancy rates are the highest they have ever been at this stage of the year, while days lost to bedblocking are up by one third in a year
Meanwhile rising numbers of patients are turning up in A&E – around four million more in the last decade, partly fuelled by the ageing population
Shortages of GPs mean waiting times to see a doctor have got longer, and many argue that access to doctors since a 2004 contract removed responsibility for out of hours care