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What Do You Attribute The Nhs Crisis To?
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Surely it has to be the net migration of hundreds of thousands of people to our tiny island each, no?
I heard the this topic on the Jeremy Vine show a couple of weeks ago, where he was asking the same question as me. But no one, or Vine, said my answer.
I know it’s not cool or virtuous to say, but surely it is the main - or at the very least, one of the reasons - why the NHS is in crisis?
I heard the this topic on the Jeremy Vine show a couple of weeks ago, where he was asking the same question as me. But no one, or Vine, said my answer.
I know it’s not cool or virtuous to say, but surely it is the main - or at the very least, one of the reasons - why the NHS is in crisis?
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It is part of the problem but it's tempered by the fact that the same immigration also brings in staff for the NHS.
A lack of recruitment of staff is also a large factor which is mainly down to working conditions / stress caused by......a lack of staff.
A lack of investment by this and previous Govts is also to blame.
There will be those who also cite a top-heavy and inefficient management structure.
A lack of recruitment of staff is also a large factor which is mainly down to working conditions / stress caused by......a lack of staff.
A lack of investment by this and previous Govts is also to blame.
There will be those who also cite a top-heavy and inefficient management structure.
A system no longer able to keep pace with medical science. When it started it was affordable because the drugs available to doctors were quite limited and reasonably cheap to produce. The surgery that could be done was no where near as radical as it is now, when transplantation is considered major but routine in some centres, when back then older people got pneumonia it was still considered 'the old man's friend' and heroic measures were rarely used in the elderly, the disabled or those with developmental or learning issues. We gradually demanded more and more as a right, drugs became more and more expensive, sometimes one drug or therapeutic can cost tens of thousands of pounds per patient to give maybe only a few months extra life. Patients are treated successfully for cancers that would have been a certain death sentence just 10 years ago. But at huge cost especially with new immunotherapy regimes
And if patients don't get the treatments they look up on line and think they need they threaten litigation.
We have jobs created to provide data for the department of health, and specialist review bodies, more jobs created to monitor performance against targets that are impossible to achieve, and probably never were, increased litigation meant the expansion of legal departments,
Failure to maintain levels of social care provision in line with the demographics
Resulting in difficulty in discharging patients who can become institutionalised and need long term care when a short step down or home support may have been enough.
Failures in health education.... It hasn't worked The motivated few get fitter the rest get fatter, and many many more are developing serious illnesses as a result.
Poor quality housing and nutrition contributes leading to health implications especially in children.
The NHS has become an all consuming beast, to have the service provision people demand it would either require a massive tax hike, ( one consultant I knew felt if the budget was doubled then had a massive increase every year based on that amount it still wouldn't keep pace with either the ageing population, or new treatments coming onstream.). Or we need to accept it can't do the impossible and accept it will only provide according to a list of specific priorities. Maybe rationing or excluding lifestyle related problems, maybe moving to a more mixed health economy, maybe also fully funding the training of the staff we need, with free tuition and reasonable bursuries.
Comes down to pay tax or pay private. Either way you will have to pay.
And if patients don't get the treatments they look up on line and think they need they threaten litigation.
We have jobs created to provide data for the department of health, and specialist review bodies, more jobs created to monitor performance against targets that are impossible to achieve, and probably never were, increased litigation meant the expansion of legal departments,
Failure to maintain levels of social care provision in line with the demographics
Resulting in difficulty in discharging patients who can become institutionalised and need long term care when a short step down or home support may have been enough.
Failures in health education.... It hasn't worked The motivated few get fitter the rest get fatter, and many many more are developing serious illnesses as a result.
Poor quality housing and nutrition contributes leading to health implications especially in children.
The NHS has become an all consuming beast, to have the service provision people demand it would either require a massive tax hike, ( one consultant I knew felt if the budget was doubled then had a massive increase every year based on that amount it still wouldn't keep pace with either the ageing population, or new treatments coming onstream.). Or we need to accept it can't do the impossible and accept it will only provide according to a list of specific priorities. Maybe rationing or excluding lifestyle related problems, maybe moving to a more mixed health economy, maybe also fully funding the training of the staff we need, with free tuition and reasonable bursuries.
Comes down to pay tax or pay private. Either way you will have to pay.
//Net migration is partly offset by people dying//
Depends how you define “partly”.
Between 2001 and 2021 the population of England and Wales rose by 8 million, from 52m to 60m. Immigration was almost entirely responsible for this increase, with the White British/Irish population remaining fairly stable at around 44-45m. The ethnic minority population in that period has almost tripled from 5.7m to almost 15m. Whilst some of this increase will be due to the offspring of immigrants being born, a good chunk of it will be due to immigration.
It is fairly obvious that without a marked increase in life expectancy, the higher the population, the higher will be the number of deaths which occur. But it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that migration figures are offset by people dying. It’s a bit like saying that the more water you run into a bath, the greater the amount that will spill over the sides when it is full. Perfectly true, but not very helpful when you’re trying to find out why the overflow won’t cope.
But back to the NHS.
//The NHS has become an all consuming beast…//
Much of what you say is very true, rw. But how is it that other nations (all of whom face the same challenges you describe) can spend similar amounts on healthcare to the sums the UK lavishes on the NHS, yet can produce far better outcomes? Could it be that almost without exception, none has seen fit to replicate the NHS model?
The NHS – certainly in its current form – is a dead duck (if it was ever alive, that is). The current imbroglio is not a temporary crisis. The NHS has been in permanent crisis for so long as I can remember. I am fortunate not to have needed its services too often but on the few occasions I have, I cannot recall - certainly not for the past forty years or more - any of my needs being met promptly, smoothly and without significant administrative problems. I can only recall delay, confusion and administrative fiascos. The pandemic did not bring on this current situation. It merely highlighted that the NHS is an organisation that is totally unfit for the demands placed on it in the 21st Century. Despite having a supposedly robust plan in place for dealing with a pandemic, as soon as it hit, NHS directors and managers wailed that they could not cope.
People in the UK must lose their quasi-religious reverence of the NHS. It is doing them no good at all to continue to worship it. We have a health service unlike any other in the developed world: where people cannot get minor ailments treated promptly; where attendance at an A&E department means you can expect to be there for a day; where people are suffering debilitating pain and discomfort for long periods whilst waiting for treatment; where they cannot rely on an ambulance being available to attend when they are seriously ill or badly injured; where there are no beds available in hospital when they need to be admitted and ultimately, where some of them sadly die because of an entirely hopeless service.
None of this is due to lack of funds. Since 2019 the NHS has seen its funding increased by 12%. In that same period the number of doctors has risen by 13% and the number of nurses by 12%. Yet the number of treatments administered fell by 5%.
No government of any persuasion seems willing to grasp the nettle and instead we will see the NHS labour along with an ever-increasing budget along with an ever-increasing deterioration of outcomes. People will therefore have to make their own arrangements for healthcare and the NHS will decline to become a “provider of last resort” rather like social housing has become in the property rental market. It will still cost a fortune but hopefully people will have learned not to rely on it and will have lost their irrational reverence for it. They will then hopefully lobby their MPs to get the entire expensive and unwieldy behemoth put out of its (and our) misery.
Depends how you define “partly”.
Between 2001 and 2021 the population of England and Wales rose by 8 million, from 52m to 60m. Immigration was almost entirely responsible for this increase, with the White British/Irish population remaining fairly stable at around 44-45m. The ethnic minority population in that period has almost tripled from 5.7m to almost 15m. Whilst some of this increase will be due to the offspring of immigrants being born, a good chunk of it will be due to immigration.
It is fairly obvious that without a marked increase in life expectancy, the higher the population, the higher will be the number of deaths which occur. But it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that migration figures are offset by people dying. It’s a bit like saying that the more water you run into a bath, the greater the amount that will spill over the sides when it is full. Perfectly true, but not very helpful when you’re trying to find out why the overflow won’t cope.
But back to the NHS.
//The NHS has become an all consuming beast…//
Much of what you say is very true, rw. But how is it that other nations (all of whom face the same challenges you describe) can spend similar amounts on healthcare to the sums the UK lavishes on the NHS, yet can produce far better outcomes? Could it be that almost without exception, none has seen fit to replicate the NHS model?
The NHS – certainly in its current form – is a dead duck (if it was ever alive, that is). The current imbroglio is not a temporary crisis. The NHS has been in permanent crisis for so long as I can remember. I am fortunate not to have needed its services too often but on the few occasions I have, I cannot recall - certainly not for the past forty years or more - any of my needs being met promptly, smoothly and without significant administrative problems. I can only recall delay, confusion and administrative fiascos. The pandemic did not bring on this current situation. It merely highlighted that the NHS is an organisation that is totally unfit for the demands placed on it in the 21st Century. Despite having a supposedly robust plan in place for dealing with a pandemic, as soon as it hit, NHS directors and managers wailed that they could not cope.
People in the UK must lose their quasi-religious reverence of the NHS. It is doing them no good at all to continue to worship it. We have a health service unlike any other in the developed world: where people cannot get minor ailments treated promptly; where attendance at an A&E department means you can expect to be there for a day; where people are suffering debilitating pain and discomfort for long periods whilst waiting for treatment; where they cannot rely on an ambulance being available to attend when they are seriously ill or badly injured; where there are no beds available in hospital when they need to be admitted and ultimately, where some of them sadly die because of an entirely hopeless service.
None of this is due to lack of funds. Since 2019 the NHS has seen its funding increased by 12%. In that same period the number of doctors has risen by 13% and the number of nurses by 12%. Yet the number of treatments administered fell by 5%.
No government of any persuasion seems willing to grasp the nettle and instead we will see the NHS labour along with an ever-increasing budget along with an ever-increasing deterioration of outcomes. People will therefore have to make their own arrangements for healthcare and the NHS will decline to become a “provider of last resort” rather like social housing has become in the property rental market. It will still cost a fortune but hopefully people will have learned not to rely on it and will have lost their irrational reverence for it. They will then hopefully lobby their MPs to get the entire expensive and unwieldy behemoth put out of its (and our) misery.
//Quite a few Managers are leaving of their own accord due to stress, I can assure you.//
Excellent if true. Doesnt seem to be down here though.
I dont think you can point to any single thing to fix the NHS. The problems are so numerous now its on the brink of collapse - just as I warned years ago on here but was shot down in flames by the usual.
Excellent if true. Doesnt seem to be down here though.
I dont think you can point to any single thing to fix the NHS. The problems are so numerous now its on the brink of collapse - just as I warned years ago on here but was shot down in flames by the usual.
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