Responding to Jeremy Hunt’s announcements on transparency and seven-day working, Nuffield Trust Chief Executive said:
"The Government is right to want seven-day access for patients to hospital and GP services. We must find ways to tackle higher mortality rates at weekends. Moving to a seven-day service should also help improve the flow of patients though hospital and the problems that result from the surge of demand on Monday.
While more hospital doctors working on Saturdays and Sundays could help in some areas, other staff – from those trained in scanning and imaging to lab technicians and pharmacists – are just as crucial. Without this, we risk having hospitals full of consultants, but without the scans or tests patients need for the doctors to take action.
Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive Nuffield Trust
"The truth is there is more than one reason for the longstanding problem of patchy weekend services. These proposals assume that the biggest obstacle to seven-day working is that consultants are unwilling to work at weekends. But while more hospital doctors working on Saturdays and Sundays could help in some areas, other staff – from those trained in scanning and imaging to lab technicians and pharmacists – are just as crucial. Without this, we risk having hospitals full of consultants, but without the scans or tests patients need for the doctors to take action.
"Perhaps the biggest barrier to seven-day working is finding the money to pay for it. The £8bn pledged by the government for the NHS by 2020 is only just enough to keep up with population change. Estimates suggest that seven-day working will cost significant amounts of money, but it is still unclear where this will come from at a time when the NHS needs to find huge and unprecedented efficiency savings. A genuine seven-day service will also inevitably mean tough decisions about merging or closing much-loved local wards.
“We’ve argued for some time that fixating on just a few targets risks warping behaviour, and looking at wider information will do much more to help the NHS improve. It’s good to see the Secretary of State acknowledge this. He should start by relaxing the one-dimensional emphasis on decisions being made within four hours in A&E. It’s just as important to manage and understand other vital measures that are often overlooked, like trolley waits and the number of people who have to come back to emergency wards within a week.”