In 2020, a sign was placed at Wembley Stadium in London, UK, thanking the UK National Health Service (NHS) for its efforts to fight COVID-19. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
The Uk's National Health Service (NHS), which was supposed to treat people and save people, is now "sick". The institution, which symbolizes Britain's welfare system, was exposed to be in "the greatest crisis ever".
In a report by the British newspaper The Times, a senior British doctor said that patients would rather die at home than risk lying on a cart in the hospital corridor waiting for treatment, and the British government is waddling towards the "winter of dissatisfaction" of the National Health Service.
Philip Banfield, president of the British Physician Association, said doctors had to decide every day which patients would survive and which would die senselessly because the NHS was in a "terrible state".
The data given by Matthew Taylor, managing director of the Federation of National Health Agencies, may be a more intuitive reflection of the crisis the agency is currently facing: "There are 100,000 vacancies. The emergency room is overcrowded. About one in seven beds is occupied by patients who should be discharged but are unable to. Some patients had to wait more than 40 hours to wait for an ambulance. ”
The Guardian reports that the NHS now has the same characteristics as many people who rely on it for life and health: old age, multiple comorbidities, and an urgent need for urgent care. Summer has put it on the brink of failure, and it's expected to get worse this winter.
Although britain is still facing a "replacement" for the prime minister, and the social community is unprecedentedly divided, there is a consensus on at least one issue: the national health care system that the country once prided itself on is "sick", and it is not lightly ill. This undoubtedly poses a direct and urgent challenge to the British authorities.
Infographic of medical staff at salford Royal Infirmary, Manchester, UK. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
The NHS system is already "not lightly ill"
According to the quarterly personnel data of the England Regional National Health Service released a few days ago, at the end of June, the NHS in the region had an unprecedented vacancy of 132139 in emergency departments, ambulances, community health personnel, mental health personnel, specialist nursing staff, etc., with a vacancy rate of 9.7%.
This not only broke the all-time record set in June 2019, but also invalidated the "improvement plan" announced by the UK Ministry of Health.
The most densely populated area of London has a record 12.5% vacancy rate in emergency, ambulance, community, mental health and specialist nursing, with more than 20,000 people in emergency rooms alone.
The data was stated that "the NHS simply does not have enough staff to provide everything they need" and that "many employees face unsustainable workloads and burnouts", which "paints a bleak picture". The crisis has eroded almost every link of the NHS system.
The number of NHS emergency room waiting times of more than 12 hours in July reached a record 29,317; The average waiting time for ambulances to respond to emergency calls is 59 minutes and 7 seconds, making the NHS standard of "ambulance response to emergency calls of no more than 18 minutes" a joke.
The total number of people waiting for medical and health care in the country is as high as 6.73 million, the average waiting time is as high as 13.3 weeks, and the number of people waiting for more than 18 weeks is as high as 2.54 million.
With the NHS system burdened, Britons have had to turn to the out-of-pocket healthcare system despite the expected reduction in income, with data showing that out-of-pocket healthcare options in the UK have increased by 39% in the two years to the end of 2021.
Relevant polls show that the proportion of UK respondents who say they "will consider choosing self-funded treatment" has now exceeded half, and compared with two years ago, even poor families with an annual income of less than 40,000 pounds are willing to do surgery at their own expense has soared by 54%, because "life is important".
Paradoxically, on the one hand, thousands of patients who want to be admitted to the hospital are unable to get into the hospital, but on the other hand, thousands of people who can be discharged are also "tied" to the hospital bed: the data shows that about one-seventh of the beds in the British NHS system, counting nearly 13,000, are occupied by "former patients" who should have been discharged long ago.
In fact, these people do not want to stay in the hospital at all, but want to transfer to a nursing home or go home to care for rehabilitation. However, due to the shortage of social care workers and specialized equipment suitable for care outside the hospital, they can only be stranded in the hospital for a long time, and even some patients have been in the hospital for an additional 9 months.
On March 7, 2022 local time, an ambulance was parked in a hospital in London, England. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
"Addition" or "subtraction" is arguing
Although the aging and overwhelmed NHS system is the consensus of British society, the "prescription" of how to deal with it is very different.
One faction believes that "insufficient input" advocates "addition" to increase investment, and this is also divided into two opinions: advocating increasing "hardware" investment and advocating increasing personnel investment.
The former is dominated by officials of the administrative system such as the Ministry of Health, who believe that the hospital premises of the NHS system are old, the medical equipment gap is serious, and the number of beds is insufficient, which needs to be increased.
The latter is dominated by members of the Medical Staff Association, believing that only a salary increase for medical staff can "boost morale" and "encourage more people to devote themselves to medicine", such as the president of the British Medical Association, who advocates "a one-time salary increase of 30% for doctors in 2023".
The other faction believes that "too much money is spent is not a place" and advocates "subtraction" to "reduce swelling" for the NHS, represented by the current Health Secretary Buckley.
In his recent speech, Barkley noted that since 2013, the number of NHS middle managers has increased from 9,000 to 18,600, with another 26,000 working on integrated care committees, 7,000 working in entrusted support units that do not provide care, some community nurses spend more than half of their time managing rather than nursing, and many NHS staff better at handling paperwork than dealing with patients.
Therefore, in Buckley's view, these "healthcare workers who do not work in health care" should be cut by at least 80% to make the NHS system more efficient and free up valuable funds for "most urgently needed relief".
Edwards, chief aide to the current Foreign Secretary, the most popular "replacement" candidate for the next British Prime Minister, believes that the NHS has a long-standing "chronic disease": before the 1980s, when the Labour Party was in power, it was too radical to promote "great welfare" including the NHS, creating a "greedy foreigner" stall, the Conservative Party came to power and overcorrected, since the 90s has been weakening NHS investment, since then the two parties have alternated in power, and the lack of vision, foresight and policy coherence at the decision-making level has led to today's "big and big". Add and subtract two embarrassments" dilemma.
The vast majority of Uk health experts admit that the pressure to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic that has lasted for more than two years has indeed brought additional burdens to the NHS system, but this is by no means the key to the problem – the "decay" of the NHS system has been accumulated for many years before the start of the epidemic.
On December 13, 2021 local time, people lined up in Severn Oaks, England, to receive the new crown vaccine. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
"Robbing Peter and paying Paul"?
For the "rotten" NHS system, the British functional departments have proposed some technical response plans, such as increasing the attraction of overseas medical staff, and encouraging overage medical staff to continue to work through pension policy adjustments.
But even those who propose these options acknowledge that the measures are "palliative rather than the root cause", and may not even have a rule of law: the UK has operated at least two large-scale health care worker increase programmes since 2015, but the effect is that the staffing gap is getting bigger and bigger.
As the Conservatives are about to elect a new leader and succeed Johnson as the next prime minister, most observers believe that the new prime minister and cabinet will have to face a more severe crisis in the NHS system. Because according to the tradition of many years, winter, rather than the current summer, is the season when the symptoms of "NHS syndrome" are the most severe.
In this regard, among the two future prime minister candidates who have rushed to the final showdown, Sunak, who is temporarily behind in the election, is concerned about the NHS issue, while Tras has always regarded the "tax cut" as a "selling point" to please ordinary members of the Conservative Party. However, since we want to "cut taxes", it is naturally impossible to increase the investment of the NHS, a "gold-sucking tiger".
In this regard, Tras proposed to "reduce medical investment for social care investment", which is obviously aimed at the phenomenon of "hegemony" in hospitals, but it has triggered a general panic among front-line medical staff. To this end, someone borrowed an English proverb and shouted that Trastever not "rob Peter and pay Paul."
Under pressure, Mr. Tras turned to say that if he became prime minister, he would "allocate an additional £13 billion for social care" instead of talking about demolishing the East Wall to make up for the West Wall.
But where does the money come from? Tras's team has hinted that a "special tax" may be established – but what about the tax reduction promise that "guarantees" Tras all the way to the prime minister's final election?
The COVID-19 pandemic has endured for a long time, with different national conditions and different health care systems, but all of them are under unprecedented pressure. The dilemma of the British NHS system is not only a direct challenge to the British authorities, but may also serve as a wake-up call for others.
Written by / Tao Short Room (Columnist)
Editor / He Rui
Proofreading / Chen Diyan