Writing for The i Paper on the latest NHS performance statistics and the government’s announcement to abolish NHS England (14 March), Dr Vicky Price, president-elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “Performance data released this week showed an expectedly bleak picture, particularly for the almost 48,000 patients who waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments. It is a depressingly familiar story and hard reading for those who have experienced this themselves or watched a loved one in this situation.
“It is extremely frustrating for staff who see this dire state of the affairs on a daily basis and yet see no credible solutions being offered as the state of stasis persists. This month we saw the publication of performance data followed swiftly by news of the government’s decision to abolish NHS England and bring that arm of the health service back into the Department of Health and Social Care.
“This has been cited as a reform to make savings and empower the NHS to deliver better care for patients, but it remains unclear what this will actually mean to those of us desperate to drive improvements for patients in urgent and emergency care.
“We as a Society are concerned about the disruption it will cause and the impact on patient care, with confusion and uncertainly likely to exacerbate frustrations with the NHS further.
“There will inevitably be delays to innovation and recovery plans. Groups that are in the process of reviewing services and writing policy documents will now not be certain if these will continue to exist and if so in what form. This will further stagnate any change and could condemn thousands to corridor care for the foreseeable future
“Staff working within urgent and emergency care are exhausted with the daily job of working in overcrowded areas with staffing crises and high pressures.
“They want to hear solutions about how we can solve social care issues and provide more placements and support at home for patients, rather than have them exposed to unnecessarily long hospital stays. They want to know how the government is planning to manage the increasing problem of multimorbidity and frailty, something we know will only get more problematic with an ageing population.
“However, what we have at present is further rhetoric from the government about restructuring and little talk of when firm action is likely to be taken on the root causes: workforce, capacity and the crisis in social care.
“A new large-scale reorganisation may well tackle some of the bureaucracy that exists, and it may create more efficiency and long-term improvement. That will be welcome. However, it will not provide any immediate relief for those patients sitting for hours in an emergency department waiting for a bed to become available.
“The NHS 10-year plan due to be published this spring may provide some of the answers, but for those stranded in an emergency department corridor, a 10-hour plan would would be much more welcome.
“Taking the NHS back under ministerial control does mean, however, that there will be no hiding place as the buck will stop with the DHSC. The impact of that will remain to be seen but, for everyone’s sake, we hope that will at least help to prevent such awful periods of stasis occurring in the future.”