NHS waiting lists have soared to another record high following the wave of strike-induced carnage, adding to the toll of the pandemic years and leaving one in eight people waiting in an NHS queue. The Mail has more.
More than 7.47 million patients in England — the equivalent of one in eight people — are now in hospital queues for routine ops like hip and knee replacements.
This includes 380,000 people stuck in limbo for at least a year, often in agony.
Tens of thousands of procedures have had to be cancelled because of walk-outs by junior doctors, nurses and paramedics.
Health chiefs fear a five-day strike by junior doctors, which began today, will cause even more disruption across the fragile health service and hamper efforts to tackle the ever-growing waiting list.
The British Medical Association’s (BMA) walk-out is the biggest in the history of the NHS.
NHS figures show that 7.47 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of May, up from 7.42 million in April.
It is the highest figure since records began in August 2007.
The number of patients who have faced year-long waits jumped from 371,111 in April to 385,022 in May. Ministers have pledged to bring this figure to zero by March 2025.
Some 11,446 patients had been waiting for more than 18 months – down slightly from 11,477 at the end of April.
The Government had set the target of eliminating this backlog by April, apart from those who have exceptionally complex cases or had chosen to wait longer.
Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said staff have continued to make progress on reducing the longest waits despite strikes, extremely high demand and bank holiday weekends.
It comes as junior doctors – who make up around half of all hospital doctors in England – today walked out as part of a five-day strike that will run until 7am on July 18th.
Just 48 hours later, consultants are set to stage a two-day strike. This rank of senior doctors earn more than £100,000, on average.
Radiographers across 43 NHS trusts will also walk out for two days from July 25th.
Worth reading in full.
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How about a Tik Tok dance? It helped in the past
I could bang a pan with a wooden spoon if that would help.
I actually hadn’t heard of that as an thing (clapping/banging a pan) before the first occurrence. I wondered WTF was going on. When I did realise what it was the sight of BoJo on the TV news standing on the steps of No 10 clapping made me want to puke.
There is so much I could say on the subject of NHS but I will try and keep on topic. As one NHS worker said to me, doctors prescribe drugs to solve the symptoms without determining the root cause (eg lifestyle,diet). Almost all drugs have side effects. And the winner is ….the pharmaceutical companies. The answer so far has been more money needed to pay for this so called ‘free service’ which will be paid for by you and me (the taxpayers). I won’t be clapping for this failed institution any time soon.
I so despise every facet of the state that I’m enjoying watching our sainted NHS crash and burn. There are no solutions to this mess that don’t eventually involve spending every last penny of the country’s wealth on RNHS. We’ll be destitute, but at least we’ll be able to get our privates chopped off on demand.
On 5th July 1948 after much planning and political wrangling the UK government implemented one of the most radical reforms in healthcare provision in the world at the time.
The NHS was announced to the general public through a leaflet sent to every household.
The quality of available healthcare did not change. Just the way we paid for it.
No. It rained hospitals, ambulances, porters, nurses, doctors, beds, operating theatres, surgical instruments on 5th July – stuff we had never had before and would never have but for ‘our’ Holy NHS. Come the day, heaps of The Poor™️ were no longer blocking the gutters in their death throes.
”You are all paying for it…”. Maybe then, but soon enough ‘all’ weren’t and increasingly fewer were paying for it, and we certainly have millions of immigrant hordes who haven’t paid a brass farthing, nor ever will… but who are first in the Everqueue.
The mortality stats tell the same story. No change in the overall trend in reduction of death rate after the inception of the NHS. A distinct small step down in infant mortality but as it had fallen from 20% in 1900 to about 3.5% in 1947 the majority of the possible improvement had already been accomplished. death rates among men over 45 and under 85 actually stopped improving at around that time and didn’t resume improving until the seventies.
Prior to NHS ‘free’ GP services were funded by local councils – so from local taxes, not central government taxes.
Thing was, the original NHS didn’t fund many elective things which are now offered – and not just because the technology didn’t exist.
Quite so. The arrangements put in place by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments were such as to ensure that more and more patients received treatment without financial anxiety. The overall plan – supported and extended by the original Beveridge report – was to use the state as a coordinating agency, stitching together the well established and multiple provisions supplied by private, local and charitable sectors.
Excellent! Well deserved. It’s what they keep voting for.
More people unable to pay their mortgage – that’s the reward for hiding under the bed during the Fakedemic.
Electricity on ration – great because they want to save the planet and no plastic too to save the fish.
Also adding to the list, the ever increasing gene therapy injured.
Yet surgeries – unasked – send frequent requests to healthy people for blood tests for diseases they don’t have….
This is a data collection exercise – our health data sent to China for analysis. NHS very keen to analyse our poo as well. Digital data is very desirable and biological data too.