NHS chief: Cash cuts mean we’ll have to shorten our patients’ lives
PATIENTS’ lives are being cut short because cash- strapped hospitals are having to ration routine operations, the NHS’s financial watchdog has warned.
Jim Mackey, head of NHS Improvement, said the service was having to ‘deprioritise’ non-urgent surgery.
If the NHS was not given more money in the Budget in two weeks’ time, he warned the public would have to rethink what hospitals are able to provide.
Mr Mackey said: ‘At some point there’s going to have to be an adjustment of what the expectations are. We’re all just juggling hand-to-mouth, none of us really feel like we’ve got a long-term plan.’
Referring to hospitals ‘deprioritising’ non-urgent operations – as a way of saving money – he said: ‘If you’re 85 and you can’t walk, we’re going to shorten your life.
‘That’s wrong, that’s not what we all want as society.’
Mr Mackey was addressing the NHS Providers annual conference in Birmingham, which represents 230 hospital, ambulance and community trusts.
In a separate intervention, the NHS Providers chief executive, warned hospital death rates and infection levels were starting to rise. Chris Hopson also said targets on cancer treatment, getting rid of mixed-sex wards and reducing waiting times were ‘starting to slip back at an increasing pace’
He claimed the UK would need to invest an extra £900 per patient to match the healthcare spending in Germany.
The NHS is struggling to meet the needs of the rising, ageing population on top of having to pay for more expensive new medicines and procedures.
Although the Government has injected more cash – an extra £8bil- lion was promised by 2020 – healthcare leaders say this will not be enough. But the NHS has also been accused of wasting money, with figures last week showing it was losing £1billion to fraud.
A separate analysis last month revealed hospitals’ inefficient operating theatres were wasting £130million a year.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show the UK spends an average of £2,777 per person on healthcare each year, which is the NHS and private combined. But Mr Hopson claimed France spent an extra £300 per head and Germany an additional £900 per head.
He said: ‘The simple point is that if we want the best care, we have to pay for it.
‘We have now reached a point where it is no longer possible to meet those NHS constitutional performance standards on current funding levels.
‘The hard-fought gains of the 2000s across a range of measures – for example, waiting times and single sex wards – are starting to slip back at increasing pace.’
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘As research shows, spending on the NHS is in line with most other European countries, and the public can be reassured that the Government is committed to continued investment in the health service – including an extra £8billion over the next five years.
‘Despite being busy, the NHS has been ranked by the independent Commonwealth Fund as the best and safest healthcare system out of 11 wealthy nations.’