Letter from Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour member
When Panorama recently investigated the NHS crisis and tried to offer some possible solutions, the BBC editor of social affairs, Alison Holt, made the very valid point that hospitals have been pushed to their limits.
The programme interviewed a number of consultants and other clinicians on one idea: treating patients at home, rather than at hospital. This would often require care from family members and this isn’t always possible and there is a simultaneous crisis, also getting worse in social care.
Holt noted that over half a million people are waiting for local government approval for some kind of care services. There are currently around 165,000 vacancies in the social care system and when Panorama interviewed a care worker, the reason became clear: they are regarded as ‘unskilled’ and the average wage was the national minimum, just over £10 an hour.
The programme also argued that around 4% of Britain’s population are defined as being ‘frail’ and they use a disproportionate number of hospital beds – 40% of hospital beds – and GP resources. Some clinicians have argued that specialist treatment centres could be an alternative to many services currently provided by GPs and hospitals, for example for testing and scanning. They could also act as preventative care centres, something seriously lacking across the NHS as a whole. It was argued these centres could take a lot of pressure of other NHS resources and save as much as £270 m from medication that would no longer be unnecessary.
However, the Panorama programme correctly argued that the NHS crisis can only be seriously begin to be tackled when staff shortages are addressed. Programmes like this are a vindication of the strikes by nurses, doctors and other health workers, are effectively trying to save the service by keeping wages up with the cost of living and stopping the flood of staff who are leaving. Care workers in the care system should also be paid decently, in fact the care service and NHS should be integrated. Ordinary Labour party members, like the general public, overwhelmingly back the NHS workers. The leaders should do the same.
The programme can still be seen on BBC i-player, here.
