Patient waiting for action on the NHS

THE situation in the NHS is getting worse by the day. Although the Boris government had promised to tackle the NHS crisis head on, but nothing concrete has been done so far.

Six million people will be left waiting for crucial operations such as hip replacements and cataract surgery by 2024 because NHS hospitals cannot cope with rising demand, and the number of people on waiting lists for planned treatment in England will jump by 30 per cent from the current 4.6 million, according to a new forecast from a collection of private health firms. The chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network said as waiting lists expand, the proportion of people forced to wait longer than the benchmark 18 weeks will more than double to 19 per cent.

Lists for elective surgery will swell as increasing numbers of seriously ill patients take up beds on general wards when they are moved from packed A&Es, said David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network. At the same time, demand for surgical procedures is growing as the population gets older.

On top of the crisis the NHS in England could reportedly have to pay £4.3bn in legal fees to settle outstanding claims of clinical negligence. The figure includes existing unsettled claims and projected estimates of future claims, the BBC has reported after getting details through a Freedom of Information request. The NHS receives more than 10,000 new claims for compensation every year and the Department of Health has said it will tackle “the unsustainable rise in the cost of clinical negligence”.

The total cost of outstanding compensation claims was £83 billion, according to estimates published last year. What people is to find out what went wrong, why they received those injuries, also to make sure it did not happen to other patients Dr Christine Tomkin, of the Medical Defence Union, which supports doctors at risk of litigation, said: “We are now awarding compensation in sums of money higher than almost anywhere in the world. We need a fundamental change to the legal system.”

This shows NHS is not yet out of woods and a lot has to be done so that proper health service is provided. The medical staff of NHS are doing their best but are unable to cope with the rising demand they are facing because of the austerity they suffered for the last 10 years.

Baldev Sharma