Still remember that sickening ode to the NHS at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in London.
Posted on 09/12/2024 3:43:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new report released this week found the Britain's National Health Service is in dire condition and providing substandard care in many areas. The report was commissioned by the Labour government shortly after it took power. It's author is a British surgeon and member of the House of Lords, Lord Darzi.
The report was the result of a nine-week review by the independent peer and NHS surgeon Lord Darzi.
He was asked by Labour, shortly after the election, to identify the failings in the health service, but his remit did not stretch to coming up with solutions.
His findings present a stark picture of a service which he says is in "serious trouble" with declining productivity, "ballooning" waits and "awful" emergency services that put patients at risk.
The BBC's description actually downplays the problem with wait times pretty significantly. The report itself cites emergency room waits that are contributing to thousands of additional deaths each year.
In 2010, 94 per cent of people attending a type 1 or type 2 A&E were seen within four hours; by May 2024 that figure had dropped to just over 60 per cent (and for all three types of A&E combined, performance is now at 74 per cent). More than 100,000 infants waited more than 6 hours last year and nearly 10 per cent of all patients are now waiting for 12 hours or more.
According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, these long waits are likely to be causing an additional 14,000 more deaths a year—more than double all British armed forces’ combat deaths since the health service was founded in 1948.
And the situation in hospitals is also bad with many people waiting over a year for treatment.
The promise is that for most procedures, treatment will start within 18 weeks. In March 2010, there were just over 2.4m on the waiting list, of whom 200,000 had been waiting longer than 18 weeks. Of those, 20,000 had waited more than a year. By contrast, in June 2024, more than 300,000—fifteen times as many—had waited for over a year, and 1.75 million had been waiting for between 6 and 12 months.
Cancer mortality is also up relative to other countries thanks to increased wait times.
The 62-day target for referral to first treatment has not been met since 2015 and in May 2024, performance was just 65.8 per cent. More than 30 per cent of patients are waiting longer than 31 days for radical radiotherapy.
The new PM Keir Starmer has vowed to issue a 10-year reform plan soon. That plan will apparently go beyond just fixing the NHS to expanding what the British call "social care." That includes care for the elderly, poor and disabled beyond hospitals and emergency rooms.
Fixing social care must be part of any plan to build an NHS for the future, the Prime Minister has said, but he declined to give further detail on the Government’s plans for the sector...
Addressing a conference hosted by The King’s Fund, the Prime Minister said: “We want that national service. We will start with the staff and build up from there with a vehicle for the consensus that we need.
“But the challenge is absolutely right. We have to fix social care because I don’t think it’s possible to build an NHS for the future if we don’t fix social care as we do it. And that makes the challenge greater.
All of this sound like it is going to spectacularly expensive. For now, the Labour government and Lord Darzi are having a fine time blaming the NHS's problems on the prior conservative government. There some truth to that, but we'll have to wait and see how enthusiastic people are about these grand reforms when the price tag is revealed.
That’s a shock, NOT.
“In 2010, 94 per cent of people attending a type 1 or type 2 A&E were seen within four hours; by May 2024 that figure had dropped to just over 60 per cent”
The Tories took over in 2010.
Britain’s NHS has been in dire condition for decades. Having toured a London hospital ER, I can vouch for the lack of modern technology and rudimentary equipment.
Britain is in dire condition. Their failing NHS is just a symptom.
Why are they admitting that? Socialism isn’t working.
At one point, the NHS was the second-largest civilian government workforce in the world. They were outnumbered only by the Indian railway system.
But the uk has taxed itself into prosperity. How can this be, in beloved Oceania?
Keep those migrants coming. Many not getting jobs and being a pure drain on services.
Yet ask the average Brit, they’re convinced the NHS is still the best thing ever.
I’m shocked! How is it possible that socialized (aka communist) medicine be in dire straights .... I’m shocked. Maybe Obamacare could help them out.
So, basically it’s the Veterans Administration.
Government-run health. Looks great on paper. What could go wrong?
So the socialists finally ran out of OPM? Paging Margaret Thatcher!
One huge issue is that it’s no longer the National Health Service, it’s become a de facto International Health Service.
Your socialist health care system was screwed up even before you let all those foreigners overrun your country. Now you claim you need to fix, what you deliberately broke.
Everybody in Britain has the right to a free coronary artery bypass graft...as long as they’re willing to wait 9 months for it.
No Western government anywhere in the world except maybe Japan can run a lemonade stand.
Creating a government agency in the future should be outlawed.
Y’all can bitch about VA all you want.
In Hawaii VA sends us to civilian service providers.
I emailed my VA doctor( useless to try to call) about my symptoms and and within 1/2 hour was ordered to go to the ER.
I was in a hospital private room within 40 minutes.
Keep in mind my VA doctor is 1 hour drive away.
the hospital is 25 minutes away.
I’m very remote.
That all being said the place I live in Hawaii (the big island) has a lot of very rich people, I’m not one of them,
but our medical services are outstanding thanks to them and thier VOLUNTARY charity.
But it’s FREEEEEEE!
Let’s see, what has changed in the UK in the past 14 years.... Hmmm, could it be a massive influx of “immigrants” with no education and no skills entering the country and not contributing to the economy?
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