Want a cure for the ailing NHS? Pay more tax
After learning of the stark warning about the NHS given last week by Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett, chairman of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, I get the impression that this Government will seek to reduce tax at every opportunity while cutting services to a point at which most of them are simply not able to function. What is this obsession with endless cuts to services, when many of us would quite readily accept paying slightly more tax to stop the NHS in parts of Britain imploding, or jails releasing dangerous criminals on to our streets just because the Government cannot find enough money to maintain the system?
Common sense dictates that we need to get rid of the national deficit, but it must be by a sensible mix of cuts and tax rises, or else our infrastructure will simply collapse.
Ann Field, Davyhulme, Manchester Sir Thomas revealed the NHS would need investment to deliver the round-the-clock care Westminster Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants. But the way hospitals are organised seems to be more inefficient than in years gone by.
A hospital I have visited regularly used to have a long central corridor with wards on either side of it – each ward contained more than ten patients. The wards had windows on two sides (daylight being therapeutic), they were easy to clean, nurses could observe the patients from a central station and the serving of meals was a simple matter. Patients could also move about in comfort.
Not now. The same ward has been divided into units of six beds, with windows on one side only, and there is an additional corridor on the ward. Now nurses cannot observe patients so easily, the moving of beds is more difficult and the lights need to be on for long periods, if not all day.
The workload of nurses and ancillary staff must have increased immensely, together with the cost.
Russell Harris, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire It has been suggested that there could be longer waiting times at hospitals. Please, no. I have just waited 11 months for a urology appointment and my son waited nine months to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. We all know the NHS is seriously underfunded, but it is not running at maximum efficiency. With the population living longer, there are more people needing NHS care. It is time the service was run in a more effective manner. Lois Jones, Ruthin, North
Wales The scale of NHS deficits has prompted warnings that care could suffer. But there is one Government department awash with money – and that’s the Department for International Development. Why not use some of its billions on deserving causes in this country? J. Moffatt, Stockport