Crisis of health service resilience is years in the making

Responding to the latest monthly NHS performance stats, Nuffield Trust Deputy Director of Research Sarah Scobie said:

“The NHS should be on a journey to recovery, but today’s figures lay bare the reality: this is a crisis of health service resilience, years in the making and the result of poor political choices and underinvestment. December has seen a frightening mix of incoming shocks for the health service, including Covid, an early and nasty flu season and a bitter cold snap which have all fed into a greater need for emergency care services.

“Too many patients needing an ambulance in the lead-up to Christmas faced horrific waits. The time to respond to serious conditions like heart attacks and strokes was over an hour and a half on average in December, over five times the 18-minute target. There were also record levels of life-threatening incidents responded to, fuelled by the impact of cold weather and sicker patients. Despite the best efforts of ambulance staff, they still face lengthy delays to handover patients safely to hospital teams, who are themselves working at capacity.

“Bed occupancy has been running at unsafe and high levels throughout the winter, and long before the pandemic. Running hospitals this hot leaves them vulnerable to the types of demand spikes we have seen. Funding to support efforts to empty beds and get people into more appropriate care outside of hospital came too late. It is no wonder NHS staff will be struggling to juggle so many demands with so little space.

“The overall waiting list, still over 7 million in total, has been stuck at this level now for a few months, but the weight of demand in December and the impact of strikes will likely have dented the ability of the service to keep waiting list numbers coming down.”