This latest attack on our NHS comes with more pressure to squeeze the health service and follows on from the wholesale marketisation reforms under the previous coalition government.
The stark warning from the British Red Cross at the beginning of the year that the NHS was facing a “humanitarian crisis” followed an unprecedented number of warnings last year about the escalating pressures facing the health service.
But the situation is getting worse, with NHS England releasing figures at the end of last year showing the number of people are waiting for non-urgent hospital procedures had reached 3.9 million in October 2016, the highest level recorded since December 2007. Also the number of patients who had urgent operations cancelled was at its highest since it began recording this data six years previously.
Now NHS bosses have divided the country into geographical areas called STP footprints with the so-called aim of improving services and saving money. This device will only be used to further cut and privatise services as the health service struggles to implement £20bn of so-called “efficiency” savings by 2020.
While the current government is presenting STPs as the solution to the NHS funding crisis, in reality they are simply asking NHS staff to deliver more and better services with less money and resources.
This plan is being driven by funding cuts and could have a massive impact on everybody. We could see even more closures or relocations of local hospital services throughout the country.
The cruel attack on our services could be stopped by proper government funding giving the NHS time to care, not time to cut. It’s time to stop the slashing, trashing and privatisation of our NHS.
I can recall those words from our last elected Prime Minister, “The NHS is safe in our hands.”
Or was that the guy who gave us all the referendum and did a runner?
Carrington Road
Spalding
