NHS: Jeremy Hunt’s Winter Plan is All Talk?

Jeremy Hunt has taken bold steps to save the health service from collapse this winter – not by providing the extra money urgently requested by hospitals but by calling a meeting and telling doctors to lift their game.

A Department of Health spokesman explained this innovative strategy. “Preparing for winter is a top priority for the Health Secretary,” the spokesman told the Daily Telegraph this week. “He met a number of NHS leaders to emphasise the importance of continuing to provide high standards of care throughout the winter period.” So all it took to avert the crisis flagged by NHS Trusts was a simple reminder that doctors are meant to help people. Hospital administrators had earlier announced that they feared the worst ever flu season this winter, warning that they were not prepared and lives could be lost without a fast injection of funds.

A spokesman for NHS Improvement, the body that oversees NHS Trusts and hospitals, made Hunt’s meeting sound like a disappointed headmaster being forced to tick off some errant students. “Performance at the organisations invited to today’s meeting is poor,” the spokesman explained. “We want to work with them and with their local health systems so that it improves in future.”

Some 60 NHS bosses from the worst-performing trusts were summoned to the meeting where Government sources said they were “read the riot act” but there were no announcements of any emergency measures to ease pressure on the service, especially given the severity of recent flu outbreaks in the Southern Hemisphere that could hit the UK in the coming weeks. Felix Magazine might be forgiven for voicing some scepticism about the impact of the meeting.

Flu Warning

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England (left), was at Hunt’s meeting having already warned about the severity of the flu outbreaks in Australia and New Zealand at the NHS Expo conference in Manchester.

“For the next three, four, five months, the top priority for every NHS leader, every part of the NHS, is ensuring that the NHS goes into winter in as strong a position as possible,” he said.

“We know we’re going to have more hospital beds open. We know we are better prepared but we also know that the pressures are going to be real.

The signs from Australia and New Zealand who are just coming out of their winter are that it has been a heavy flu season and many of the hospitals down there have struggled to cope. We know that there is a great deal of work to be done over the next six to eight weeks with our partners in local authorities to put the NHS on the right footing for the winter ahead.”

Urgent Cash Injection

A report by the service’s trade association NHS Providers said that time is running out to prepare for winter and called for an immediate injection of “between £200m and £350m to enable the NHS to manage patient safety risk this winter.”

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, acknowledged that last winter the health service came under pressure “as never before.”

“At its height, the NHS had to provide 4,500 additional beds a day, equivalent to more than eight extra hospitals. Patient safety was compromised as local services struggled to cope with the pressures. At times, in some places, the NHS was overwhelmed. We must act now to prevent the situation becoming even worse this winter. The overwhelming view of NHS trusts is that without immediate extra funding they will not have sufficient capacity to manage this winter safely,” said Hopson.

by Stewart Vickers

 

 

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