More than 10,000 healthy patients in England remained in hospital over Christmas due to a lack of care from the National Health Service, according to the latest official figures.
NHS England data released on Friday showed that 18,669 hospital patients were fit for discharge on Christmas Eve, but only 8,667 were discharged.
This means 10,002 patients were unnecessarily stuck in hospital over Christmas, with the Labor Party highlighting the figures and blaming “13 years of Conservative cuts to social care and community nurses” for the situation.
Lack of social care is often seen as a major cause of delays in patient discharges from hospitals, as well as failures to manage patient discharges due to limited NHS capacity.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the Tories were “grinches who literally stole Christmas from these people”.
“The grief faced by families and patients this Christmas was completely avoidable,” he said. “10,000 patients [were] in the hospital on Christmas Day who didn’t need to be there.”
Mr Streeting said a Labor government would provide more health care to the public to “help patients stay at home and be closer to their families”.
A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesman said the government had made progress in other areas, including “reducing ambulance response times, increasing the number of beds and the number of NHS 111 calls answered.”
“Compared to last year, despite additional pressure on the health service, ambulance handover delays have fallen by more than 50 per cent and NHS 111 has taken 6.4 per cent more calls,” they said.
Christmas Eve discharge figures indicate an improvement on the previous month, with 12,611 patients still in hospital on 24 November despite being considered fit for discharge.
A DHSC spokesman added that NHS staff had been forced to “divert their attention from preparing for winter” to focus on the “implications of the looming strike”, while calling on unions to go on strike before the end of the week to call off the week.
The latest figures come amid mounting pressure on Rishi Sunak over his pledge to cut NHS waiting lists, with the backlog of applications still near a record high, almost a year after the Prime Minister promised to close them to cut them .
Waiting lists for elective hospital treatment in England fell slightly in October for the first time this year, but remain close to record levels in September.
Patients were waiting for almost 7.71 million appointments in October, up from a record 7.77 million in September, according to NHS England.
When Sunak promised to tackle the hospital backlog in January this year, the figure stood at 7.21 million. The statistics only cover waiting lists in England, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own healthcare systems.
Meanwhile, the number of people waiting more than 18 months for an appointment rose from 10,201 in September to 10,506 in October. The government insists it is a key indicator for measuring progress towards Mr Sunak’s target of reducing waiting lists, although it says the figure represents a sharp fall from a peak of 124,911 in September 2021.
The NHS will be a key battleground ahead of the next general election, senior Tories say I Earlier this year they feared it could become an anchor for the prime minister’s election prospects.
Conservative MPs, ministers and Whitehall insiders said they were increasingly concerned that unresolved doctors’ strikes, waiting lists and ongoing staffing problems would overshadow Sunak’s bid for a fifth Conservative term – even if he succeeds in bringing down inflation and reinvigorating the election. economy until the next elections.
It comes amid growing expectations of more NHS strikes in the new year, which senior health officials have warned will be “larger and longer-lasting” than in 2023.
Earlier this month, junior doctors in England walked off work for three days, and a further six days of British Medical Association strike action was due to take place from January 3 to 9.
Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health organizations across England, said it was the longest strike in the history of the NHS and would lead to more hospital visits being canceled as senior doctors would have to cover for striking junior doctors.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Britain’s largest nurses’ union, warned earlier this week that it was also prepared to launch further strikes over pay and working conditions.
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the RCN, said strikes earlier this year had made only modest progress because ministers made small compromises to “save their own skins rather than the revolution that was needed”.
She called on the union’s 500,000 members to “put ministers back under more pressure than they would like” to demand above-inflation pay rises for nurses, as well as commitments to staffing levels.
Source: I News
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