AFTER 13 YEARS UNDER CONSERVATIVE PARTY - ENGLAND HAVE RECORD NUMBER WAITING FOR HOSPITAL TREATMENT (millions)
A record 7.68 million people are on a hospital waiting list in England, figures show.
The total at the end of July represents nearly one in seven people and is a jump of more than 100,000 in a month.
The news prompted Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to say meeting his target to reduce the waiting list
would be "very hard" pinning the blame on strikes.
Walkouts by doctors were a "significant cause" of the rise, he said - and with no strikes, the target
would be met.
“The target would be met”? Who you are kidding, Rishi? In 2023 there has been 16 days of NHS strikes in total. Therefore, Rishi, are you saying that in those 16 days the NHS could deal with all 7.6 million patients waiting? This is just another “bedtime story” for naïve people who still believe that you will “save the UK”, creating news headlines with nothing else to offer.
The news comes as the government announced an extra £200m for the NHS this winter, following talks with health bosses on Wednesday. This is on top of a £250m boost already announced earlier in the summer, which is helping to pay for 5,000 extra hospital beds and 10,000 virtual beds, where patients are supported at home by doctors for conditions such as respiratory and heart problems which would normally lead to a hospital admission.
Rishi, all this about “extra beds” is just another trick by your government to keep you and the conservative party in Number 10 a bit longer. My assumption is that your government will soon come out with the next “New Covid”, which will again be named after the Greek alphabet. What will come after Delta? Covid Epsilon, or Covid Zeta or Covid Eta? Only you and your bunch of cronies know.
The Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, said he wanted to see "high impact" interventions to help the NHS get through this winter. Commenting on the waiting list, which covers people needing routine treatments such as knee and hip operations, he agreed the strikes were having a negative impact, driving up the numbers and "harming" patients. Close to a million appointments and treatments have had to be postponed since industrial action in the NHS began in December. But Mr Barclay pointed out progress had been made on the very long waits, with the numbers waiting more than 18 months close to being eliminated.
Are strikes to blame?
Not at all! As written above, it’s just another "bedtime story" from Rishi Sunak!
Rishi Sunak just cannot be honest with the nation about one single thing. The waiting list has been creeping up during the decade before the pandemic. So, who has been in charge of the Health Department for the last 13 years? Your party – the conservatives!
When Covid hit, the numbers rose by nearly three million in just over two years. Who should be blamed? Boris Johnson, who closed all the hospitals in the country to routine admissions!
But during last winter, that rise appeared to plateau. For six months from September, the total on the waiting list changed little. Modelling had suggested this was likely to last a year, before the total number started falling.
But the data in March showed the numbers rising again - and this has continued ever since.
March was the month doctors' strikes began - and they are hugely disruptive.
But there can be other reasons why the waiting list can go up - factors such as staffing shortages lead to cancelled treatments too.
Who is to be blamed for staff shortages [1]? Yet again, your party and you in the government!
Even taking into account the impact of the strikes, the NHS is still doing fewer operations than it was before the pandemic.
The NHS does not appear to be firing on all cylinders, even when there is no strike action. The numbers needing care and joining the waiting list are continuously going up.
So, Rishi Sunak, you are wrong! As much as you are trying to convince yourself that you are right and that nobody on this planet knows anything at all; whatever you come out with - we, the people must take it for granted! What a joke!
By the way, I have been waiting for my surgeries since December 2019, when your predecessor Boris Johnson closed the hospitals. I was given a new date: 25 May 2020. This was cancelled again, because of Boris Johnson. After that date, I was not contacted at all until February 2021, then yet again forgotten for a year. I still haven’t had my operation under the NHS, despite that I am now being treated for my 4th cancer.
Even today - despite that I was assured by the doctors in hospital in London 14 days ago that I needed emergency surgery to happen this week - no messages, no calls, no letters from the NHS about the date and time of my “emergency” surgery.
This is similar to when a year ago I was left in a hospital corridor for 3 days, with a huge wound.
There was no one to see me; even less there was no one to do the surgery. My next of kin was called, as they categorised me DOA. And it was not a strike day.
[1] For the total number of doctors and nurses, a rapid increase in recruitment from the rest of the world has compensated for the slowdown in EU workers. The number of nurses joining the UK register from the rest of the world has risen from 800 in 2012/13 to 18,000 in 2021/22. However, this is not sufficient to make up for ongoing shortages in nursing and cannot be a replacement for adequate workforce planning to recruit and retain staff domestically. (Nuffield Trust, Health and Brexit: six years on. 19/12/2022)
If we are playing a bit further with statistic than we have to be aware that more then 27,000 nurses and midwives quit the NHS in 2021, which was the highest number in four years.
Further report also showed that around 140,000 NHS staff left active service in the year to September 2021, which is equivalent to 1:9 (11%) of the total staff.
Most recent figures reveals that in the year to December 2022, 169,512 staff left NHS service in hospitals, community health services and other core health organizations, compared to 149,678 the previous year.
