Tory cuts - NHS crisis

The Sunday Times reports that in the last six weeks 8000 operations have been cancelled as hospitals fill up with elderly patients – that’s a 17% increase in cancellations compared to the same period in 2012, itself a 20% increase on the year before.

The Department of Health says the number of cancellations remains low in the context of ‘millions’ of operations performed by the NHS each week.  (You’ve got to question that statistic – are we all having one each?)  Our own David Fish says this is ‘head-in-the-sand denial.’  DoH bureaucrats and ministers have been warned plenty of times by front-line health professionals that when it comes to essential healthcare, cuts means crisis.

 

Labour’s Shadow Health Minister Andy Burnham says the cancellations are because more people than ever are being admitted to hospital from A&E – “a clear sign that too many frail, older people are struggling to cope because of the loss of care support at home.

“David Cameron’s fingerprints are all over the crisis in A&E.  On his watch, it has got harder to get a GP appointment and people are ringing surgeries to be told nothing is available for days.  Add to that his severe cuts to social care, the closure of Walk-In Centres and the break-up of NHS Direct and we have an A&E crisis made in 10 Downing Street.”