The NHS is in such a poor state that the next government should declare it a national emergency, experts have warned, as record numbers of patients have been found not receiving timely cancer treatment.
The country is facing an “existential threat” due to years of underinvestment, severe staff shortages and the demands of an aging population, according to a group of leading doctors and NHS leaders.
Whoever comes to power after the general election will have to ‘relaunch’ the healthcare system and ask the public to do what they can to help save it and preserve its founding principles, they say.
The call, drawn up by an expert committee put together by the medical journal BMJ, comes as new figures show that since 2020, more than 200,000 people in England have not had potentially life-saving surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy within the supposed 62-day maximum waiting period of the NHS. .
Prof. Pat Price, a leading NHS oncologist who helped analyze NHS data on cancer care, said Britain was facing “the deepest cancer crisis” of her 30-year career treating cancer patients.
The NHS target is for 85% of cancer patients to receive their first treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred by a GP. International research shows that every four weeks of delay in receiving treatment can lead to a 10% increased risk of dying from the disease.
But the analysis by Radiotherapy UK and the Catch Up With Cancer campaign found that 222,577 people did not start treatment within 62 days between January 2020, just before Covid-19 struck, and last November. That equates to one in three (33%) of all people – 671,094 – referred for treatment in that time.
Those with breast cancer were most likely to start treatment within 62 days – 77% did so, but almost one in four (23%) did not. But 53% of bowel cancer patients and 41% of those with lung cancer had to wait longer than the two-month target before they could undergo chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery.
The number of cancer patients waiting longer than two months has risen sharply, from 37,243 in 2020 to 69,100 in the first eleven months of last year, although the number of referrals is also increasing.
Acute concerns over the NHS’s ability to cope with the rising tide of illness were heightened last night when A&E doctors claimed that a government plan launched a year ago relieving pressure on overcrowded emergency departments had made no difference. Emergency departments are still in ‘permacrisis’, while ward care is ‘as unsafe, if not more unsafe, than this time last year’, despite Rishi Sunak’s ‘ambitious and credible plan to tackle the problem’ solve’ praises.
Although 5,000 extra hospital beds have been created, the “half-baked” plan has made “little real difference to the experience of patients and the working conditions of healthcare professionals”, said Dr Ian Higginson, the vice-president of the Royal College. of emergency medicine.
The BMJ’s committee on the future of the NHS has concluded that “the healthcare system is in crisis, stretching beyond the breaking point”, and that radical action is needed by the next government to ensure that the healthcare system remains a universal service that is free to use and financed by public funds. tax.
“Given the extreme gravity of the situation and the lessons learned, we recommend that the post-election government declare a national health emergency, calling on all parts of society to to help improve health, care and well-being. The (next) government should in fact relaunch the NHS,” they add, writing in the BMJ.
The high-level panel was co-chaired by Lord Victor Adebowale, the President of the NHS Confederation, and its 30 members include senior doctors, healthcare leaders, public health experts, a former NHS chief executive and health policy experts.
“You would have to live on Mars not to see that the NHS is in an emergency,” said Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary.
“The BMJ is right to say that the founding principles of the NHS are as relevant today as they were 75 years ago. It is the Conservatives’ neglect for fourteen years that has caused this mess.”
Streeting backed the committee’s call for a long-term plan to invest in the NHS while reforming it, pointing to Labour’s record of the shortest ever waiting times for care and the highest patient satisfaction in the country’s 75-year history the NHS. “We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again,” he added.
Andrea Leadsom, the former minister who is now health secretary, is expected to face in-depth questions about the state of the NHS when she does a round of broadcast interviews on Wednesday morning.
NHS bosses said they agreed with the panel’s plea for much more support. But Dr. Layla McCay, policy director at the NHS Confederation, warned that the next government would need to show deep determination – and provide additional funding – to “get back on track”.
“Declaring a national health and healthcare emergency will not solve any of the problems it highlights without a commitment to solving them.
“In the short term, we want to see more capital invested to improve infrastructure, buy new equipment and increase productivity. In the long term, governments must continue to commit and invest in the workforce plan, but also continue to invest in preventive services and bring care closer to home,” she added.
Pressures on the NHS are likely to intensify due to the expected continued growth of the UK population and the number of older people. New projections from the Office for National Statistics published on Tuesday show the population could reach almost 74 million people by 2036 and the number of people of retirement age could rise by 1 million by 2039.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are providing record funding to the NHS, we have delivered on our pledge to recruit an additional 50,000 nurses early, and we have introduced the first ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan to ensure the NHS will have the staff it needs in the coming years.
“We are supporting the NHS to recover from the pandemic and tackle the Covid backlog. Reducing waiting lists is one of the government’s five top priorities.
“November was the first month without industrial action for more than a year and we reduced the total waiting list by more than 95,000 – the biggest drop since December 2010, excluding the pandemic.”