‘We must move to an integrated publicly funded system of care’
THE excellent speakers at the North Staffs Pensioners’ Convention public meeting on Monday, May 9 gave us a clear picture of the state of our NHS and care system.
It was not good news. Despite the heroic efforts of NHS and care workers, we have a care system in Britain that is in crisis.
Jan Zablocki from the Green Party provided the statistics, all gathered from official sources.
Numbers of GPS have fallen, vacancies amongst all doctors and nurses have increased, thousands of NHS staff are leaving the profession, the number of hospital beds has been cut dramatically, we have fewer CT and MRI scanners than most comparable countries and spending per person on our NHS is the second lowest compared to the G7 group of large developed economies.
Health campaigner Ian Syme agreed that the NHS is seriously underfunded and added that social care is in an even worse situation.
He said that covid had put a huge strain on our care system and exposed the fault lines that had existed before the pandemic. He also stated that that the discharging of infectious patients from hospital into care homes resulted in many thousands of avoidable deaths, more died after contracting covid in hospital and hundreds of care workers died because they were not properly protected.
He pointed out that even now there are high levels of hospitalisation and care staff absences due to covid and long covid is a serious and growing issue which is devastating people’s lives.
Because operations were cancelled during covid, the backlog of people on the waiting lists for elective surgery such as hip operations has now grown by two million to more than six million. With services such as cancer care, patients are dying because they are not being seen quickly enough.
The devastating impact of covid is across the board but, according to Ian, all care services were under stress before covid.
He said that the last decade has seen the deepest funding squeeze in the history of the NHS. He also bemoaned the Government’s failure to tackle social care – funding as far short of what is needed.
He agreed with Jan that we need more scanners but we also need more qualified staff to operate them.
One in four radiology positions are unfilled. Ian said there are 110,000 vacancies in the NHS and 150,000 in social care.
Why is there such a problem with the recruitment and retention of care staff?
The resource pressures and lack of effective workforce planning make it stressful and exhausting to work in the care system.
Nurses and other NHS workers are not paid enough and in social care, the pay is dismal. He added that locally, GP numbers are even lower than the national average.
The Royal Stoke University Hospital (RSUH) have recently been under huge strain because of a combination of low staffing and resource levels, higher demand, the continuing impact of covid and the inability of social care services in the community to deal with the numbers of patients needing care when they leave hospital.
Ian said hospitals rely on the smooth transition of patients through the care pathway and these factors have prevented that from happening.
He referred to the campaign that he played a key part in alongside the North Staffs Pensioners’ Convention and other groups such as Save Leek Hospital, to prevent the closure of 184 NHS community hospital beds.
He said that if the authorities had kept the beds open they could have enabled the safe and swift discharge from the RSUH into the community and helped ease the pressures.
Ian highlighted one direct consequence of these problems - the huge increase in the number of long delays in ambulance handover times.
This has meant that many patients are waiting for hours in an ambulance after arriving at hospital, causing increased stress and putting lives at risk.
Is there a better alternative to a publicly funded care system?
Both speakers agreed that the American model is not the way forward. It costs over double the NHS and delivers poorer outcomes because a huge amount of money ends up in the hands of private insurance companies.
The message that I took away from the meeting was that it is essential that we move to an integrated, publicly funded care system with social care workers on the same terms and conditions as NHS staff.
We need effective workforce planning throughout and care workers must be valued and supported so that it becomes rewarding and not soul destroying to work in care.
If the NHS and social care is to provide the care we all need we must have a government that bites the bullet and puts in the major investment required.
For those who say we cannot afford it, Jan Zablocki had the answer.
He said we are the fifth richest economy in the world but there is huge and growing inequality in Britain.
It is about how we allocate the wealth. It is about political will. We must demand that politicians step up to the plate and deliver.