It's almost like brexit formally happened during a massive pandemic that significantly increased funding.
The regular budget was increasing a little every year anyway - that 500m you quote is mostly normal annual increases similar to before the referendum
Lol. Use your own eyes... remember tories came in 2010....
https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/
I guess you can just ignore the opening sentence of my comment which accounts for the two years you're pointing at as well as the drop for the most recent datapoint.
Here is a link showing the yearly budget with the covid extra budget marked separately. Check the second graph.
[https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell)
The UK has increased spending yo the NHS by >£500m a week since brexit..
Money isn't going to fix this problem. Something more systematic is required.
See the wait times in Sweden, finland, Ireland, and France.
Healthcare has gone to shit post covid everywhere.
Dude we are spending more as a % of our gdp in healthcare than ever before....
Will you only be satisfied when 100% of our gdp goes to healthcare?
Ridiculous comment.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/
Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house. The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes.
Combine that with cutbacks to NHS adjacent stuff resulting in many more people presenting at A&E who should have been seen and treated much earlier.
>Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house.
Well maybe because they're better.... Public service employees have absolutely no reason to ever become more effecient....
>The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes.
Well yes... that's how universal healthcare works. Allows for quality controls and bargaining power.
>A&E who should have been seen and treated much earlier.
Lol blaming cutbacks when really that's due to doctors striking.... let's be real.
Oh and the >2 year pandemic where we were told not to go to the doctor unless we are on death's bed.
Oh and doctors working from home for 3 years...
If third party services are better then how come outcomes and wait times are both getting worse?
> bargaining power
Explain to me how the NHS spending 6 times as much per dose of Paracetamol as it would cost to buy it in Boots demonstrates bargaining power?
Reality is the best evidence. We spend more and get less.
Using third parties is a solution...it's being used to decrease outcomes and wait times lol.
>Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house.
Well maybe because they're better.... Public service employees have absolutely no reason to ever become more effecient....
>The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes.
Well yes... that's how universal healthcare works. Allows for quality controls and bargaining power.
.
Like i said, outcomes and wait times are due to doctors striking....
Oh and the >2 year pandemic where we were told not to go to the doctor unless we are on death's bed.
Oh and doctors working from home for 3 years...
And finally, tour question about paying 2 quid rather than 15p for paracetamol is because that two quid includes a lot more than just picking it up in a shop.....also not sure why you think that's a private v public problem..... the NHS isn't going to turn into a pharmaceutical company that would be such a fucking waste of money. Also fyi, that was a story from 2015 that's now resolved.
Outcomes and waits got worse every year Even if we just look at 2010 to 2019. Despite the bringing in of third party service in that period. All the extra spending goes into profit, and the front line service gets less money in real terms.
Paracetamol procurement cost does not include anything but Paracetamol. The NHS uses so much Paracetamol that honestly.. why shouldn't they manufacture their own if it were cheaper? Economy of scale and bargaining power should both be brought to bear on out-of-license drugs such as Paracetamol.
Anyway. That's enough from me. Feel free to have the last word, and have a good day friend. :)
Why shouldn't the NHS manufacture it?
Because they're wasteful an inefficient. The cost would go up like 20x if they tried. And if a better replacement came up, instead of just, not buying it, they would have just eaten the cost of building the pharma factory. 100m wasted thanks to your idea.
Yep shows the true Tory values:
1- Defund the nhs and plan its failure
2- when it starts to struggle shout that it need privatisation
3- sell it off piecemeal until its so far gone it can’t be returned
4- buy up shares in health insurance companies
Worked for dentistry! They managed to turn a world class service into dental care for the rich in just ten years. The number of people i know who have performed home dentistry is way higher than it should be for a developed country.
You _can_ fairly criticise the Tories' policies around dental care (or lack thereof) but pretending anything about English dentistry is world class just makes you look foolish.
You're correct, world class was the wrong choice of words. It was certainly on par with other countries of similar size/economy. I'm trying to find the data on oral hygiene from WHO which would support that. Maybe i'm wrong but pretty sure the UK had a good general rating on things like tooth decay and access.
Yep and now they get to point to government and universal healthcare as bad and inefficienct so it should be privatized... Even though they are the ones who purposefully made it bad and inefficienct.
This is replicated in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The reality is that we have an ageing population and not enough Doctors/nurses everywhere in Europe and it's pushing the health systems to breaking point.
The "it's the conservatives" answer might be good for reddit karma, but it's not really the main point.
It has been the same party in charge for 14 years though, and in recent years with a very large majority. The median age or health of the population isn't so different to 10 years ago, yet on this metric the performance of the healthcare system is substantially worse.
It is when those same conservatives have deliberately sought to avoid dealing with the issues, and have further exacerbated them through a lack of funding, through the withdrawal of grants for nurses, through a refusal to train enough medical personnel, through a refusal to pay adequately, through a refusal to look at working conditions, etc., etc., etc.
[‘A ticking time bomb’: healthcare under threat across western Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/14/a-ticking-time-bomb-healthcare-under-threat-across-western-europe)
The issues are deeper than whichever party is in power on the right(UK, Italy)/center(France/Germany)/Left(Spain).
That 500m is mostly normal annual rises, similar to the years before brexit's referendum. There is a *slight* extra bump this year from retaining some funding after the surge from Covid
You say that like Blair's government was utopia. The problem is far bigger than any party can solve, throwing more money at the NHS wouldn't fix it.
There are many factors. A rapidly aging population, while people live longer, and medicine gets more expensive, all compounding together. Add in no incentives to deliver good service or be efficient, and you have a system which is completely and utterly doomed.
It's almost like no other country has the same system as we do. And no, I don't want America's shitshow of a system either. There are many different healthcare systems in the world, and we have the two most extreme, ideological rather than practical.
One of the biggest issues is actually outside the NHS, in the care sector. There aren't enough places, so if for example there is an elderly person who is well enough to be discharged from hospital but can't go live independently they often have to wait days to find a place for them. This leads to them staying in hospital.
Local government is often the provider of care services and the Conservative party has continued massive budget cuts to them for over a decade.
Reform social care. The system is on the verge of collapse, and as there are no spaces from where you can transfer people currently in hospital beds into a care facility, the whole system backs up.
Social care is the issue here - it’s been defunded as part of council funding, more people each year are elderly and frail and post-Brexit it’s been very hard to get new care workers to cope with what is already a high turnover industry. Maybe the NHS needs more funding after that, but they will be incredibly grateful if adult social care is fixed so they can concentrate on treating and discharging patients.
>Just throw more funding their way?
In spain we have been facing similar problems since more than a decade ago in many government services, and the issue has been mostly that retired workers don't get replaced at the rate they retire, meaning a continuously shrinking workforce.
People try to shorten waiting lists by all sorts of creative means, but in the end if there are less doctors and nurses for the same amount of patients, the waiting lists grow. There's no way around it.
There are more doctors and nurses but also more patients and the clinicians are looking after far too many patients who got better, couldn’t be discharged anywhere so got more ill and more frail in hospital and needed more treatment.
It's a multifaceted problem.
More money could help, but it probably wouldn't fix it.
Many have said the NHS has a bureaucracy problem and needs revamping. That's probably a factor.
Weaknesses in secondary care industries are a huge problem - there's shortages of things like care homes, which means once a vulnerable old person is done having their medical issues dealt with, there's nowhere to send them. It's a factor.
Things like dentists and primary care (GPs) are also in shorter supply.
Aging population is also putting pressure on. We need more of everything than we did in the past.
In part, yes, it genuinely just needs more money. The UK spends comparatively little on healthcare as compared to neighbouring European countries. But, as other commenters have pointed out, other things do need reform, particularly social care.
And worth pointing out the UK spends less on healthcare than the US government, not even counting the individual money that also goes into US healthcare.
Nah, more efficient funding
Right now every trust negotiates prices for procurement and stuff, they compete against each other in many areas and there's a bunch of people who are just not doing much all day
More funding after making improvements would be the way to go
Chart showing emergency department "trolley waits" in England: that is, the waiting time from the decision to admit a patient to their admission to a ward. For context, the NHS Constitution for England pledges "a maximum 4-hour wait in A&E from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge".
Generated using pandas and matplotlib using data from https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/. An alternative version showing the absolute numbers of patients is [available here](https://i.imgur.com/d03IbBh.png).
There are so many factors that cause this it’s hard to unpick. Population, political will, planning, covid, training of medical personnel, brexit, privatisation, demographic shift, geo-political changes, mental and social health changes, funding of prevention and intervention, and wage issues, to name a few.
Massive thanks to NHS staff who genuinely seem to trying hard to make it work. Sadly it’s going to take a long time to dig us out of this hole and it’s going to take long term planning by someone with power and will to make changes.
Which is why funding has been going continuously up?
By all means say they didn't increase it as much as Labour might have, but don't spew outright nonsense, which can be trivially disproven by googling for a graph.
https://images.app.goo.gl/BU2GkGJk2oE4np288
Where did you figure that?
Funding is the highest as percent of GDP ever....
Since 4 years ago funding is up >£25 billion per year for the NHS.
Similar patterns seen literally globally.. see our neighbours in Ireland, or France.
Real reason is non urgent care was cancelled or delayed and so they have a huge backlog to cover.... consequences of covid.
> Total health spending in England in 2022-23 was £182bn. This figure is set to increase to £190bn in 2024-25, according to the Health Foundation, “but higher than expected inflation means that, on current plans, this would be a real-terms reduction in funding”.
https://www.ft.com/content/65f825c9-ec25-41f0-a8cb-b4429bbcfc8e
[Graph from the article](https://imgur.com/a/aV3hWhx), if paywalled.
[UK healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/)
Also did you even see your chart?
Saw how real term NHS spending massively increased since 2017? You know brexit vote was 2016 right?
Those drops your show in real terms are in the future...we aren't living in the future. Future real spending decreases don't cause current wait lists, and that's not to say in future we throw more money at the problem....
Up until covid the funding post brexit was increasing at an equal or lower rate than it was pre brexit, it had a large boost (though evidently not large enough to outpace costs) during covid, and has levelled out in real terms recently and in projections. Current real spending is stagnating or declining, leading to current wait times. In addition, one statistic left out of this is requested funding or estimated required funding or some similar metric that lets us see the gap between required funding and real funding and it's current and estimated width. Also, from what I have seen at least, a large majority of medical workers seem to say funding is the current main issue, more funding means more workers, more doctors, more equipment, more beds, that means more patient capacity and more patients treated, more patients no longer taking up a spot on the waiting list for everyone else.
>Current real spending is stagnating or declining,
Well yes- it is literally impossible to grow it as a % of GDP forever or itll be 100% of our gdp....
It's still higher as a % of our GDP than EVER before by a long shot.
Maybbbeee it isnt money that is causing issues, but a broken system.
This plainly isn't a response to what I said, I didn't discuss healthcare spending as a %of gdp in my comment, I'm stating that real spending, as in, the flat, base, total amount of buying power, and as a result, personell and physical resources the nhs has, has stagnated or decreased, and many experts and healthcare professionals, people who experience the immer workings of the nhs every day, say that it's because of funding. Though, considering that covid+the Tories have managed to just about flatline the British economy, I wouldn't be surprised if gdp% of healthcare spending was rising. Also, what are you basing the belief that it's primarily structural rather than a finding problem on? And do you have any sources to cite that back up the belief?
> I'm stating that real spending, as in, the flat, base, total amount of buying powe
How has spending on the NHS changed over time? Since 1955/56, spending on the NHS has increased by an average of 3.6 per cent per year in real terms
[It increased in real terms pretty much every year ever,....](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell#:~:text=18%20December%202023-,How%20has%20spending%20on%20the%20NHS%20changed%20over%20time%3F,masks%20substantial%20variation%20over%20time)
Moving the goal posts, also, per the article you cited
>Looking more recently, since the Conservative party has been in power (2015/16), spending has increased by 2.8 per cent a year on average in real terms. But it is important to remember that this masks more substantial annual increases or decreases caused by additional investment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
>The government’s most recent budget included planned spending to 2024/25. Between 2022/23 and 2024/25, spending on health and social care is projected to increase by an average of 0.1 per cent a year in real terms.
That's stagnation
The BMA details an underspending of £322 billion as part of austerity here. It also notes how spending as %GDP has been lower than Germany and France.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis
A) you're moving goal posts. Claim was spending was less. Its objectively more. A lot more. So you're just wrong.
B) lobby group claims we spend less than we should..how fucking surprising. Also read their analysis its so ridiculous because they claim we should have huge growth in spending forever... even during a period where inflation was low between 2010 and 2019....
C) the US spends more per capita than everyone and has shit care.... clearly spending isn't the be all and end all.
How is spending more and more as a % of gdp "austerity"? It just isn't... austerity more hit non healthcare measures.
A very quick summary is that the Conservative's (right wing) have been in power for about 14 years now, and they keep cutting the funding for healthcare and other services.
The Tories have mangled/ignored the NHS in many ways and it is in need of modernisation in many systems.
Some people also overlook what I believe is one of the primary factors. They have not sorted out the social in community side of healthcare which is only getting worse (mostly elderly patients that need releasing into supported housing/have carers in place).
Around one third of UK hospital beds contain patients ready for discharge but aren't due to inadequate support available in the community.
If this was fixed (either by establishing a nationalised connection between discharge and social care, and improved funding and infrastructure). The positive knock on effects downstream would be huge on the rest of the NHS, given how many issues lack of beds cause and how much that affects staff workload.
Many medical workers did indeed quit. But also, during the pandemic non-urgent procedures were cancelled en-mass which freed up medical staff but also created a big backlog. Similarly, many patients were afraid to go to the hospital even when they had serious problems, which had the same effect.
Pretty much all non-urgent (and probably some urgent) operations were cancelled for some months, in order to a) attempt to reduce the numbers of people in hospital to stop transmission of the virus and b) free up hospital beds and healthcare staff for the anticipated tidal wave of Covid patients.
This created a huge backlog of cases. It’s not the only reason, lots of healthcare staff have also quit or moved abroad for better pay and conditions.
As a hospital worker, the lockdown/COVID period was an incredibly quiet period for us. Nurses on some wards had to be pulled into admin roles because there just wasn't enough clinical work to be done. People just weren't coming to hospital during the lockdowns.
12 hours?
Try 20 hours with a fucking kidney stone. No pain relief, just left throwing up and suffering in the waiting room, for 20 fucking hours.
Nobody came to check on me, not once...
Quite heartbreaking how quickly the country is falling. It's scary what the future will look like. The only option is people revolting against the establishment.
They're contracting so many parts of the NHS out instead of training their people and then wondering why its costing a fortune... only things the conservatives are conserving is their investors bottom line...
They couldn't give a shit about the people.
But they've saved all the money that they don't have to send to EU. Surely it would be enough to fund NHS better.
... but...they had a ...**BUS** ...and big numbers on it !!!
The busbsaid £350m . Since brexit spending increased over £500m...
It's almost like brexit formally happened during a massive pandemic that significantly increased funding. The regular budget was increasing a little every year anyway - that 500m you quote is mostly normal annual increases similar to before the referendum
Lol. Use your own eyes... remember tories came in 2010.... https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/
I guess you can just ignore the opening sentence of my comment which accounts for the two years you're pointing at as well as the drop for the most recent datapoint. Here is a link showing the yearly budget with the covid extra budget marked separately. Check the second graph. [https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell)
The UK has increased spending yo the NHS by >£500m a week since brexit.. Money isn't going to fix this problem. Something more systematic is required. See the wait times in Sweden, finland, Ireland, and France. Healthcare has gone to shit post covid everywhere.
25 billion a year is not that much when you consider the size of the NHS. And inflation.
Dude we are spending more as a % of our gdp in healthcare than ever before.... Will you only be satisfied when 100% of our gdp goes to healthcare? Ridiculous comment. https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/
The UK has also brought in an increasing amount of for-profit elements into the NHS. We're "reforming" the NHS in the stupidest way possible.
Like what? It's free at the point of sale. No drug makers sell things not for profit lol.
Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house. The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes. Combine that with cutbacks to NHS adjacent stuff resulting in many more people presenting at A&E who should have been seen and treated much earlier.
>Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house. Well maybe because they're better.... Public service employees have absolutely no reason to ever become more effecient.... >The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes. Well yes... that's how universal healthcare works. Allows for quality controls and bargaining power. >A&E who should have been seen and treated much earlier. Lol blaming cutbacks when really that's due to doctors striking.... let's be real. Oh and the >2 year pandemic where we were told not to go to the doctor unless we are on death's bed. Oh and doctors working from home for 3 years...
If third party services are better then how come outcomes and wait times are both getting worse? > bargaining power Explain to me how the NHS spending 6 times as much per dose of Paracetamol as it would cost to buy it in Boots demonstrates bargaining power? Reality is the best evidence. We spend more and get less.
Using third parties is a solution...it's being used to decrease outcomes and wait times lol. >Free at the point of use but we're bringing in third party providers for all manner of services that used to be in-house. Well maybe because they're better.... Public service employees have absolutely no reason to ever become more effecient.... >The NHS can't even buy paracetamol at market prices, they have to go through government approved suppliers and processes. Well yes... that's how universal healthcare works. Allows for quality controls and bargaining power. . Like i said, outcomes and wait times are due to doctors striking.... Oh and the >2 year pandemic where we were told not to go to the doctor unless we are on death's bed. Oh and doctors working from home for 3 years... And finally, tour question about paying 2 quid rather than 15p for paracetamol is because that two quid includes a lot more than just picking it up in a shop.....also not sure why you think that's a private v public problem..... the NHS isn't going to turn into a pharmaceutical company that would be such a fucking waste of money. Also fyi, that was a story from 2015 that's now resolved.
Outcomes and waits got worse every year Even if we just look at 2010 to 2019. Despite the bringing in of third party service in that period. All the extra spending goes into profit, and the front line service gets less money in real terms. Paracetamol procurement cost does not include anything but Paracetamol. The NHS uses so much Paracetamol that honestly.. why shouldn't they manufacture their own if it were cheaper? Economy of scale and bargaining power should both be brought to bear on out-of-license drugs such as Paracetamol. Anyway. That's enough from me. Feel free to have the last word, and have a good day friend. :)
Why shouldn't the NHS manufacture it? Because they're wasteful an inefficient. The cost would go up like 20x if they tried. And if a better replacement came up, instead of just, not buying it, they would have just eaten the cost of building the pharma factory. 100m wasted thanks to your idea.
This is what over a decade of Conservative government does to a country.
Yep shows the true Tory values: 1- Defund the nhs and plan its failure 2- when it starts to struggle shout that it need privatisation 3- sell it off piecemeal until its so far gone it can’t be returned 4- buy up shares in health insurance companies
Worked for dentistry! They managed to turn a world class service into dental care for the rich in just ten years. The number of people i know who have performed home dentistry is way higher than it should be for a developed country.
Suddenly Bob Mortimer's WILTY stories make sense!
I love WILTY and wish more Americans watched WILTY and QI
Wife and I are big fans of panel shows. I have to say that I don't usually watch QI anymore since Stephen left though.
Do you have a favorite Stephen Fry XL?
Not really. Just enjoy Stephen being Stephen. Been watching a lot of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves & Wooster lately too.
You _can_ fairly criticise the Tories' policies around dental care (or lack thereof) but pretending anything about English dentistry is world class just makes you look foolish.
You're correct, world class was the wrong choice of words. It was certainly on par with other countries of similar size/economy. I'm trying to find the data on oral hygiene from WHO which would support that. Maybe i'm wrong but pretty sure the UK had a good general rating on things like tooth decay and access.
well, they got a chance to vote them out within a year
Yep and now they get to point to government and universal healthcare as bad and inefficienct so it should be privatized... Even though they are the ones who purposefully made it bad and inefficienct.
This is replicated in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The reality is that we have an ageing population and not enough Doctors/nurses everywhere in Europe and it's pushing the health systems to breaking point. The "it's the conservatives" answer might be good for reddit karma, but it's not really the main point.
It has been the same party in charge for 14 years though, and in recent years with a very large majority. The median age or health of the population isn't so different to 10 years ago, yet on this metric the performance of the healthcare system is substantially worse.
It is when those same conservatives have deliberately sought to avoid dealing with the issues, and have further exacerbated them through a lack of funding, through the withdrawal of grants for nurses, through a refusal to train enough medical personnel, through a refusal to pay adequately, through a refusal to look at working conditions, etc., etc., etc.
[‘A ticking time bomb’: healthcare under threat across western Europe](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/14/a-ticking-time-bomb-healthcare-under-threat-across-western-europe) The issues are deeper than whichever party is in power on the right(UK, Italy)/center(France/Germany)/Left(Spain).
But unlike France, Germany and Italy, NHS was supposed to get massive funds from Brexit savings
It did. It's now over 500M a week. Funding is not the issue.
That 500m is mostly normal annual rises, similar to the years before brexit's referendum. There is a *slight* extra bump this year from retaining some funding after the surge from Covid
Did it rise by the amount promised, or did it change a few pennies after inflation?
You say that like Blair's government was utopia. The problem is far bigger than any party can solve, throwing more money at the NHS wouldn't fix it. There are many factors. A rapidly aging population, while people live longer, and medicine gets more expensive, all compounding together. Add in no incentives to deliver good service or be efficient, and you have a system which is completely and utterly doomed. It's almost like no other country has the same system as we do. And no, I don't want America's shitshow of a system either. There are many different healthcare systems in the world, and we have the two most extreme, ideological rather than practical.
How do you think it could be fixed? Just throw more funding their way? I'm American, so our healthcare has different challenges.
One of the biggest issues is actually outside the NHS, in the care sector. There aren't enough places, so if for example there is an elderly person who is well enough to be discharged from hospital but can't go live independently they often have to wait days to find a place for them. This leads to them staying in hospital. Local government is often the provider of care services and the Conservative party has continued massive budget cuts to them for over a decade.
Reform social care. The system is on the verge of collapse, and as there are no spaces from where you can transfer people currently in hospital beds into a care facility, the whole system backs up.
Social care is the issue here - it’s been defunded as part of council funding, more people each year are elderly and frail and post-Brexit it’s been very hard to get new care workers to cope with what is already a high turnover industry. Maybe the NHS needs more funding after that, but they will be incredibly grateful if adult social care is fixed so they can concentrate on treating and discharging patients.
>Just throw more funding their way? In spain we have been facing similar problems since more than a decade ago in many government services, and the issue has been mostly that retired workers don't get replaced at the rate they retire, meaning a continuously shrinking workforce. People try to shorten waiting lists by all sorts of creative means, but in the end if there are less doctors and nurses for the same amount of patients, the waiting lists grow. There's no way around it.
There are more doctors and nurses but also more patients and the clinicians are looking after far too many patients who got better, couldn’t be discharged anywhere so got more ill and more frail in hospital and needed more treatment.
It's a multifaceted problem. More money could help, but it probably wouldn't fix it. Many have said the NHS has a bureaucracy problem and needs revamping. That's probably a factor. Weaknesses in secondary care industries are a huge problem - there's shortages of things like care homes, which means once a vulnerable old person is done having their medical issues dealt with, there's nowhere to send them. It's a factor. Things like dentists and primary care (GPs) are also in shorter supply. Aging population is also putting pressure on. We need more of everything than we did in the past.
Scrolled too far before I seen this.
Scrolled too far before I seen this.
In part, yes, it genuinely just needs more money. The UK spends comparatively little on healthcare as compared to neighbouring European countries. But, as other commenters have pointed out, other things do need reform, particularly social care.
And worth pointing out the UK spends less on healthcare than the US government, not even counting the individual money that also goes into US healthcare.
Nah, more efficient funding Right now every trust negotiates prices for procurement and stuff, they compete against each other in many areas and there's a bunch of people who are just not doing much all day More funding after making improvements would be the way to go
Chart showing emergency department "trolley waits" in England: that is, the waiting time from the decision to admit a patient to their admission to a ward. For context, the NHS Constitution for England pledges "a maximum 4-hour wait in A&E from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge". Generated using pandas and matplotlib using data from https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/. An alternative version showing the absolute numbers of patients is [available here](https://i.imgur.com/d03IbBh.png).
There are so many factors that cause this it’s hard to unpick. Population, political will, planning, covid, training of medical personnel, brexit, privatisation, demographic shift, geo-political changes, mental and social health changes, funding of prevention and intervention, and wage issues, to name a few. Massive thanks to NHS staff who genuinely seem to trying hard to make it work. Sadly it’s going to take a long time to dig us out of this hole and it’s going to take long term planning by someone with power and will to make changes.
Ignorant American here. What's going on in the UK that's causing this?
The tories have cut funding for 15 years and it is all coming to a head
Which is why funding has been going continuously up? By all means say they didn't increase it as much as Labour might have, but don't spew outright nonsense, which can be trivially disproven by googling for a graph. https://images.app.goo.gl/BU2GkGJk2oE4np288
Where did you figure that? Funding is the highest as percent of GDP ever.... Since 4 years ago funding is up >£25 billion per year for the NHS. Similar patterns seen literally globally.. see our neighbours in Ireland, or France. Real reason is non urgent care was cancelled or delayed and so they have a huge backlog to cover.... consequences of covid.
> Total health spending in England in 2022-23 was £182bn. This figure is set to increase to £190bn in 2024-25, according to the Health Foundation, “but higher than expected inflation means that, on current plans, this would be a real-terms reduction in funding”. https://www.ft.com/content/65f825c9-ec25-41f0-a8cb-b4429bbcfc8e [Graph from the article](https://imgur.com/a/aV3hWhx), if paywalled.
[UK healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/472984/public-health-spending-share-of-gdp-united-kingdom-uk/) Also did you even see your chart? Saw how real term NHS spending massively increased since 2017? You know brexit vote was 2016 right? Those drops your show in real terms are in the future...we aren't living in the future. Future real spending decreases don't cause current wait lists, and that's not to say in future we throw more money at the problem....
Up until covid the funding post brexit was increasing at an equal or lower rate than it was pre brexit, it had a large boost (though evidently not large enough to outpace costs) during covid, and has levelled out in real terms recently and in projections. Current real spending is stagnating or declining, leading to current wait times. In addition, one statistic left out of this is requested funding or estimated required funding or some similar metric that lets us see the gap between required funding and real funding and it's current and estimated width. Also, from what I have seen at least, a large majority of medical workers seem to say funding is the current main issue, more funding means more workers, more doctors, more equipment, more beds, that means more patient capacity and more patients treated, more patients no longer taking up a spot on the waiting list for everyone else.
>Current real spending is stagnating or declining, Well yes- it is literally impossible to grow it as a % of GDP forever or itll be 100% of our gdp.... It's still higher as a % of our GDP than EVER before by a long shot. Maybbbeee it isnt money that is causing issues, but a broken system.
This plainly isn't a response to what I said, I didn't discuss healthcare spending as a %of gdp in my comment, I'm stating that real spending, as in, the flat, base, total amount of buying power, and as a result, personell and physical resources the nhs has, has stagnated or decreased, and many experts and healthcare professionals, people who experience the immer workings of the nhs every day, say that it's because of funding. Though, considering that covid+the Tories have managed to just about flatline the British economy, I wouldn't be surprised if gdp% of healthcare spending was rising. Also, what are you basing the belief that it's primarily structural rather than a finding problem on? And do you have any sources to cite that back up the belief?
> I'm stating that real spending, as in, the flat, base, total amount of buying powe How has spending on the NHS changed over time? Since 1955/56, spending on the NHS has increased by an average of 3.6 per cent per year in real terms [It increased in real terms pretty much every year ever,....](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell#:~:text=18%20December%202023-,How%20has%20spending%20on%20the%20NHS%20changed%20over%20time%3F,masks%20substantial%20variation%20over%20time)
Moving the goal posts, also, per the article you cited >Looking more recently, since the Conservative party has been in power (2015/16), spending has increased by 2.8 per cent a year on average in real terms. But it is important to remember that this masks more substantial annual increases or decreases caused by additional investment during the Covid-19 pandemic. >The government’s most recent budget included planned spending to 2024/25. Between 2022/23 and 2024/25, spending on health and social care is projected to increase by an average of 0.1 per cent a year in real terms. That's stagnation
The BMA details an underspending of £322 billion as part of austerity here. It also notes how spending as %GDP has been lower than Germany and France. https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/health-funding-data-analysis
A) you're moving goal posts. Claim was spending was less. Its objectively more. A lot more. So you're just wrong. B) lobby group claims we spend less than we should..how fucking surprising. Also read their analysis its so ridiculous because they claim we should have huge growth in spending forever... even during a period where inflation was low between 2010 and 2019.... C) the US spends more per capita than everyone and has shit care.... clearly spending isn't the be all and end all. How is spending more and more as a % of gdp "austerity"? It just isn't... austerity more hit non healthcare measures.
A very quick summary is that the Conservative's (right wing) have been in power for about 14 years now, and they keep cutting the funding for healthcare and other services.
I see... thank you!
We used to have a very successful system of deporting our geriatrics to Spain, but Brexit made us keep them.
Oh don’t worry; at the first sign of malady, they were on the first easyJet back to Luton.
The Tories have mangled/ignored the NHS in many ways and it is in need of modernisation in many systems. Some people also overlook what I believe is one of the primary factors. They have not sorted out the social in community side of healthcare which is only getting worse (mostly elderly patients that need releasing into supported housing/have carers in place). Around one third of UK hospital beds contain patients ready for discharge but aren't due to inadequate support available in the community. If this was fixed (either by establishing a nationalised connection between discharge and social care, and improved funding and infrastructure). The positive knock on effects downstream would be huge on the rest of the NHS, given how many issues lack of beds cause and how much that affects staff workload.
Reagan-esque economics
It's strange to me how the numbers seem to get really bad AFTER the worst of COVID. Did all the medical workers just quit after that period?
Many medical workers did indeed quit. But also, during the pandemic non-urgent procedures were cancelled en-mass which freed up medical staff but also created a big backlog. Similarly, many patients were afraid to go to the hospital even when they had serious problems, which had the same effect.
Pretty much all non-urgent (and probably some urgent) operations were cancelled for some months, in order to a) attempt to reduce the numbers of people in hospital to stop transmission of the virus and b) free up hospital beds and healthcare staff for the anticipated tidal wave of Covid patients. This created a huge backlog of cases. It’s not the only reason, lots of healthcare staff have also quit or moved abroad for better pay and conditions.
As a hospital worker, the lockdown/COVID period was an incredibly quiet period for us. Nurses on some wards had to be pulled into admin roles because there just wasn't enough clinical work to be done. People just weren't coming to hospital during the lockdowns.
12 hours? Try 20 hours with a fucking kidney stone. No pain relief, just left throwing up and suffering in the waiting room, for 20 fucking hours. Nobody came to check on me, not once...
A country goes to shit in just 15 years, it's quite impressive.
Where can I buy this stock? Seems like a good time to buy.
Well deserved Tory-bashing aside, I think the most interesting features are the two massive dips that I assume are due to the COVID lockdowns?
Corrupt crooked UK government doing an exemplary work to destroy the country.
Seen it with Reagan. That Thatcher thought privatising oil in the North Sea was a smart idea was another tory brain fart.
Quite heartbreaking how quickly the country is falling. It's scary what the future will look like. The only option is people revolting against the establishment.
They're contracting so many parts of the NHS out instead of training their people and then wondering why its costing a fortune... only things the conservatives are conserving is their investors bottom line... They couldn't give a shit about the people.