The paper by the King’s Fund Health thinktank says chronic denials of funding to the health service and a failure to tackle a growing workforce crisis have left it with too few staff, too little equipment and too many outdated buildings to carry out the scale of operation it needs. . The UK’s poor public finances, healthcare staff suffering from burnout and a wave of NHS strikes this winter will also mean ministers are unable to deliver on key commitments to end long routine waiting times, says the thinktank. The findings are particularly disturbing to the Conservatives because the report was ordered by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) late last year. They are critical of the impact on the NHS of the austerity program launched by David Cameron in 2010 and continued by his successor, Theresa May. The report contrasts unfavorably with the tactics used by the Labor governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the 2000s to tackle the appallingly long waits for care they inherited in 1997. “While Covid has certainly exacerbated the crisis in the NHS and social care, we are ultimately paying the price for a decade of neglect,” said King’s Fund chief executive Richard Murray. “Sporadic cash injections during the austerity years after 2010 were intended to cover [the service’s] daily operating costs. This lack of long-term investment has led to a health and care system constrained by staff and equipment shortages and crumbling buildings. These critical challenges have been evident for years. “The NHS in 2022 faces many of the same challenges it faced in 2000: unacceptably long waiting times and a service hampered by staff shortages. Added to this now is the cost of living crisis, industrial action by staff and the backdrop of a weak economy and weak public finances.” The report is based on the first in-depth academic research carried out in the UK into what measures NHS ministers and bosses can put in place to deal with situations such as those prevailing today, where huge numbers of patients are again facing long delays in access in planned hospital care. Its findings are based on a review of evidence on waiting times and, in particular, interviews with 14 experts, including many of the key figures in Labour’s successful eradication of long waits. One of the experts, none of whom can be named, said: “We’ve had essentially 10 years of managed decline. This is not a Covid problem. This is a problem of austerity.” The report points to Cameron’s decision to cut the annual NHS budget from Labour’s 3.6% to an average of just 1.5% as the main reason for the service’s loss of capacity. The service’s performance against some waiting time targets introduced by Labor began to fall in 2015 and has worsened every year since. The report comes just days after the latest official figures showed England’s waiting list for non-urgent hospital care had reached a new record high of 7.2 million people. Of those, 410,983 waited more than a year for treatment – such as a hip or knee replacement, cataract removal or hernia repair – which should take a maximum of 18 weeks. UK A&E doctor leaders as well as NHS Ambulance Service bosses in England have expressed deep concern at the number of patients who are harmed, and even die, as a direct result of waiting for an ambulance to arrive or get into A&E or from there in a hospital bed. The 81-page document is published later this week. He says NHS under-resources, combined with today’s different political, economic and financial conditions, mean the politically significant promises made earlier this year in NHS England’s “optional recovery plan” are highly unlikely to be met. They included pledges to end waits of two years, 18 months and one year by the summer, next spring and 2025 respectively. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The government has pledged £8bn to tackle the backlog and NHS England has set up dozens of community diagnostic centers to help speed up tests and treatment for patients. In his response to the Guardian about the report, Blair criticized all six Tory governments since Labor lost power in 2010 for deviating from the three strategies he used to tackle the backlog: reform, investment and political focus . He said the change in approach had damaged the NHS’s ability to deliver care within set waiting time targets. “These key elements were, and I believe still are, essential to improving public services. Since Labor left power, every pillar of these principles has been weakened when it comes to our health services,” Blair said. “The report says waiting lists are now at their highest level since the 18-week treatment referral measure was introduced in 2004, as well as the collapse of urgent care.” He also took aim at repeated attempts by ministers to portray the massive waiting list for care – which was already at 4.4 million when the pandemic hit in spring 2020 – as “the Covid backlog”. Blair said: “This is not a result of Covid, but chronic underinvestment and mismanagement exacerbated by Covid.” He added: “The lessons from this [Labour government] The period, which ended with satisfaction levels with the NHS at record highs, remains the same because they are lessons for governance: the government and the prime minister are making it a priority, devoting time and energy. a policy is put into place based on what works. and then there is an unrelenting effort across government to ensure delivery.’ Blair said the King’s Fund findings “must act as a political wake-up call to renew efforts to reform the NHS, give that reform the political focus and scrutiny it needs and align it with the right strategic investment”. The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.
