NOW PRIVATE HOSPITALS AND RETIRED NURSES JOIN THE FIGHT
PRIVATE hospitals along with their 20,000 staff, 8,000 beds and 1,200 ventilators will join the NHS in the battle against the coronavirus after a major deal was agreed last night.
In the first deal of its kind, from tomorrow private hospitals will be available to manage the expected surge in cases, as well as deliver other urgent operations and cancer treatments.
It came as the Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “delighted” that 4,000 retired nurses and 500 doctors had signed up to return to work.
But a leading health expert yesterday said that the stricter lockdown that came into force on Friday night – leaving town centres largely deserted, and pubs and restaurants closed – should have been brought in much sooner.
Professor Hugh Pennington said that the crisis facing the National Health Service is down to people not isolating themselves and becoming infected weeks ago.
The deal between NHS England and private hospitals will see more than 10,000 nurses, 700 doctors and 8,000 other clinical staff made available to the NHS.
It comes as London began to struggle to cope with an explosion in the number of patients left seriously ill with the virus.
Northwick Park hospital, in north-west London, was forced to declare a “critical incident” on Thursday after running out of critical care beds when operating theatres were turned into makeshift intensive care units.
Under the deal, the capital will have access to more than 2,000 extra hospital beds, as well as 250 operating theatres and critical beds.
Mr Hancock said: “I know how hard the NHS has been working to secure extra beds and staffing. This is great news for the hospitals and staff doing everything they can to combat coronavirus.
“I want to pay particular tribute to those heroes returning to the front line to support their colleagues and help as many patients recover from the virus.”
NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said: “We’re dealing with an unprecedented global health threat and taking immediate and exceptional action to gear up.
“The NHS is doing everything in its power to expand treatment capacity and is working with partners right across the country to do so.”
Under the deal, the private hospitals will reallocate practically their entire national capacity to the NHS and will be reimbursed at cost – meaning no profit will be made.
David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers
Network, said: “Independent hospitals are boosting emergency capacity to put at the disposal of the NHS over these coming weeks. We have worked hand-in-hand with the NHS for decades and will do whatever it takes to support the NHS in responding to this pandemic.
“This significant additional capacity across the country will be a major boost to the NHS’S efforts to treat those patients who need hospital care over the coming period – and the independent sector stands ready to maintain that support for as long as needed.”
Professor Pennington, from the University of Aberdeen, argued that non-essential shops “where people are going to browse” and hang around puts “people including the staff at risk at a time when we are trying to stop the spread and keeping public contact to the minimum.
“It would be far easier to tell
‘We’ll do whatever it takes to help’ ‘Please, please stay at home’
them in a straightforward way to shut and perhaps services could be delivered or taken directly to people’s houses instead. I don’t know why the Government didn’t close pubs, clubs and restaurants earlier – people were not paying attention.
“We know that it doesn’t work to advise people not to do things. People were told not to go to the pubs and they still did so and some pubs refused to close.
“The crisis in hospitals now relates to infections that were picked up weeks ago.
“London has more cases than you would expect and at the moment is under more pressure than the rest of the country.
“If Northwick Park couldn’t cope with the pressure locally, that is a bad sign of a system stretched to the limit. It is also an indicator of the large numbers of people infected which we cannot know without more testing.”
Dr Julia Courtney, a respiratory