Commenting on health secretary Therese Coffey’s statement in the House of Commons and the release today of the government’s Our Plan for Patients, Dr Nick Scriven, past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “Our concerns remain ever-present despite the health secretary’s outline of the government’s Plan for Patients today.
“As usual we have seen headlines which grab attention but an omission of specifics of the root causes of the problems in the NHS and social care and how we tackle them long-term.
“What was missing was an admission that the whole system is broken and needs intensive care – sticking plasters will just lead to perennial failure.
“SAM and so many other medical bodies and healthcare organisations have repeated consistently that we must focus on staffing, bed capacity and social care provision as a matter of urgency – a complete overhaul.
“The worry is that, instead of focusing on these core areas explicitly, we are seeing more talk of short-term measures such as increasing the number of volunteers, new telephony systems and promising better access to GPs without a plan for resilience.
“What we do know is that without ensuring problems with workforce and capacity are effectively resolved promptly, there is no hope of pulling out of the dire situation we are in.”