In light of the upcoming election, the major parties in England have pledged billions more to support the NHS over the next few years; but what’s wrong with our current National Health Service, why are the parties putting such a strong focus on it, and is money going to be all it takes?
The NHS appears to be struggling more than ever, and is in serious need of investment from the government if it is going to continue to provide good healthcare.
Recent statistics show that NHS hospitals countrywide are failing to meet key targets relating to treatment waiting times, including:
- A&E – only 83.6% of patients are being treated or admitted in under four hours, where the target is 95%
- Cancer treatment – only 76.9% of patients are starting their cancer treatment within 62 days, where the target is 85%
- Routine operation – only 84.8% of patients are having their routine operations within 18 weeks, where the target is 92%.
The reason for this failure is largely down to increasing pressure on the NHS from several contributing factors, namely:
- Aging population – the Office for National Statistics reports that 16% of our population is aged 65-84, compared with 14% just 20 years ago. 2.5% of the current population is aged 85 and over, an almost 2% increase on the same period. By 2050, it is anticipated that those figures will have increased further still
- Older people cost more to treat – figures released suggest that a 65-year-old costs two and a half times more to treat than a 30-year-old does, and a 90-year-old costs seven times more to treat than a 30-year-old. This cost will continue to rise as the population gets older
- Job vacancies – there are 100,000 job vacancies currently within the NHS, 40,000 of these vacancies are for nursing jobs. Worse still, this number of vacancies has not been reduced a great deal in the last two years. With all the vacant positions, it is estimated there would be enough staff to run 10 hospitals
- Insufficient budget increase – since 1949, the NHS budget has been increasing each year by an average of 4%. While this sounds good in principle, in fact, the UK only matches the Europe average in the percentage of its GDP spent on healthcare, whether that is public or private. France is Europe’s leader in this respect and spends nearly 12% of its GDP, compared to the UK’s 9% – a gap that has become greater in recent years. Among their campaign pledges, the Conservatives have promised an annual spending increase of 3.4% and Labour has promised 3.9%. However, this is still below average increases and the Health Foundation believes that at best, this will help the NHS to keep up with increasing demand, but will now allow improvements in the quality of care.
What does this all mean? With all of these shortages coupled with an increasing demand, the majority of those in leadership in the NHS are anticipating that the number of clinical negligence claims will rise. The National Audit Office has stated that 40% of claims against the NHS relate to delays in treatment or diagnosis, and this is only likely to increase. If the number of people needing treatment increases, existing resources will be stretched even thinner and the NHS will struggle to maintain current standards of care.
The government is already suggesting that one way around this issue would be to extend, if not entirely scrap, the targets on waiting times, which would make it harder to claim that delayed diagnosis or treatment was negligent. One question to ask is whether it should be fair and legal to hold the NHS accountable when it does not have the resources available to do any better.
Whatever the answer, for the time being, the government’s focus seems to be getting through the immediate future, leaving potentially large gaps in care.