The real reasons why A&E departments are bursting at the seams

This is an excellent article by Dr Clive Peedell about why A&E services are in crisis.

By Dr Clive Peedell, co-leader of the National Health Action Party

A&E services across England are in crisis, with the Director of Patient safety at NHS England, Mike Durkin, admitting that patients are likely to have been harmed. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is trying to pin the blame on GPs. He points to contract changes nearly a decade ago which took responsibility for out-of-hours cover away from GPs. This argument is illogical. How could an event in 2004 cause a sudden crisis in 2013? And, obviously, it was not GPs who designed these changes but the Department of Health, influenced by private sector lobbyists wanting to privatise out-of-hours services.

This scapegoating of GPs suggests that Mr Hunt and the Coalition Government are desperate to distance themselves from blame for the NHS system collapse they themselves have caused.

In summary, there are five main factors which are fuelling England’s A&E crisis after a period of record satisfaction with NHS services just three years ago: massive cuts by successive governments of hospital bed numbers which mean patients end up stuck in A&E beds and can’t be moved onto wards; a lack of community care resources leading to hospital bed blocking; inadequate out-of-hours GP-replacement services; the use of unqualified staff at call centres to screen patients and advise if and where to seek treatment; and the closure of A&E departments. All form part of the overall NHS privatisation set out in last year’s controversial Health and Social Care Act.

UNISON National Executive Council Elections 2013 - Health Results

We lost.

That’s the short of it. None of the socialist candidates for Health seats on the NEC were elected. This is a blow, but to be expected given the level of activism UNISON encourages of its membership, how the union is run and the low horizons and expectations this creates, and the level of participation by members in the unions limited democratic structures. I’d like to thank everyone who put in the hard work leafleting hospitals and other NHS services to get the vote out. We did alright, and there valid reasons beyond our control for the result. There is also a lot we can improve on to make sure we stand a chance of winning next time. More on that in another post. Now for some analysis of the result.