The difficulties have been mag nified by escalating shortages of ey staff, and by the pig-header efusal of minister like Milburr to base NHS policies on the actual situation, rather than on the discredited, second-hand Thatcher's Tories The key factor which Milburn and his team have consistendy Ignored is the rising tide of emersency admissions of cider patients requiring medical rather than surgical treatment. stay longer in hospital for treatment - and are more likely to sions. require a package of care to support them at home or a nursing home place before tey can be discharged If sufficient medical beds are not availble, these patients admitted as emergencies, wind staff. up waiting hours on end on troneys and often bogod insp propriately in beds in surgical BEDS 'Let me through, I'm a Labour spin doctor' wards - with disastrous consequences for waiting list admisFor almost ten years both Tory and Labour governments have insisted that the numbers reduced by switching extra esourcesto primary care -It is now quite obvious that this strategy has failed: GPs are sive and hi-tech nursing.
not willing and lack the pipeline at best represent a resources to provide inten- tandstill on bed numbers several Cases increased Iderty patients, and instead claimed, this means replacend them to hospital front-line But the hospital Trists (which handle emergencies many of them still reeling financially from the three "intermediate" beds, which wen in wich our sin deliver a lower level of nurs• vicious Tory cash limits, ing care.
ack the cash for stalf to open the extra beds they Milburn's need to deal with this situa- that the NHS expanded bed numbers - by the princely The only answer is for the pubic sector to step in and Colas provide a service that the pri- hollow in the context of the ate sector will not offer: the mounting problems in disNHS should be urgently open- charging older padenis - and the shortages ing up nursing home places in staff, without whom the beds areas - notably in Greater be Radcliffe Hospitals shortages of places. They could deliver quality care, free at alone reports up to lU beds at a time in the busy John Radcliffe Hospital cannot be ront-line hospital beds for those who need more inten making a nonsense of the This follows frecdom to pay out bonuses -nies, listed on the stock market, to develop and sell new and created an W orsc, Milburn local revealed that there prises in the list of failing Trusts: in other words ministers and NHS Where CHes numbers months that some hospitals the slide PCIC UU acute done noting doout it, ofact than prepare to pillory the It is hard to avoid the conclusion that some Trusts are boasts the Epsom/St Helier Trust in last south west London, which not only receivca no stars. total of but was recently slammed as try" by the government's inspectorate, Health of nursing ment (CHI) The to £5m in the red. But as a nep chief execuTrust tive was wheeled in, and talk began about an 'action plan, He owes taracte would be no extra money to identified by CHI.
Labour's NHS fiasco Outlook