Wes Streeting is in urgent talks with NHS bosses in England, as the winter crisis expected
Wes Streeting has held urgent talks with NHS leaders in England about how the service will cope with an impending winter crisis, amid signs it is already under intense pressure.
At the meeting on Monday, the Health Secretary told NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard and bosses of major hospital trusts to prioritize patient safety over trying to meet waiting time targets.
He called the meeting days after NHS England said hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed by a potential “quad-demic” of flu, Covid, RSV and the diarrhea and vomiting disease (norovirus).
There is growing alarm that more than 2,000 of the service’s 100,000 beds are already filled with people with Covid (1,390) or norovirus (756), while a further 142 are occupied by children with the disease respiratory sincytial virus (RSV) and that ambulance services are having difficulty processing the number of 999 calls they receive.
Streeting said: ‘We inherited a broken NHS that saw the annual winter crisis as the norm. This year we are seeing record pressure on services as we enter winter. This winter, I want patient safety to be a priority as we brace for the months ahead.”
He has asked local NHS leaders to make it a priority to get patients out of ambulances and into their hospitals as quickly as possible so that crews can get back on the road to attend other incidents, and also to ensure ensure that patients do not wait too long. for emergency room care.
Pritchard said the agency will face even greater pressure in the coming weeks as the cold snap hits, even as it has ramped up hospital-at-home-style “virtual wards” and delivered more than 27 million vaccinations since September.
“We know that services will come under even more pressure,” she said.
She echoed the Health Minister, stating that ‘patient safety must come first’ as hospitals and ambulance services come under pressure. The NHS, local councils and social care service providers must work together to minimize the number of hospital beds occupied by patients who are medically fit to be discharged, she added.
But hospital doctors raised concerns that Streeting felt it necessary to tell NHS bosses to do their best to maintain patient safety – which will inevitably be compromised. The NHS’s lack of staff and resources is the main reason it cannot meet treatment waiting time targets, the Society for Acute Medicine has said.
Dr. Tim Cooksley, the association’s former president, said: “It is worrying that the Secretary of State considers it reasonable to reiterate the need to focus on the key priorities that frontline clinical and operational staff face every day.” wants to optimize extreme pressure.”
“The stark reality is not that hospitals and frontline staff are manipulating targets, but that they are simply unable to deliver safe and effective care, even when they do their utmost to do so, given the impossible situations in which they are located.
“The additional cases of winter viruses, such as Covid, influenza, norovirus and RSV, are causing many hospitals to experience critical incidents and putting patient safety at risk – but not because hardworking staff are not putting patient safety first, but because the hospitals simply cannot cope,” he added.
Professor Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser at the UK’s Health Security Agency, urged more people to get a winter flu jab to help the NHS and reduce the number of flu-related deaths.
“The flu is increasing sharply and is causing more and more people to end up in hospital. Unless more people at risk come forward and become eligible for a vaccine, this trend is likely to continue, resulting in more hospital admissions over Christmas and tragically, more deaths than we saw over Christmas last year.
“We must remember that the flu can still be very serious for some and that the vaccine is our best defense,” Hopkins said.