Staff fear services will not be able to cope with a combination of flu, resurgent Covid, winter and a cost-of-living crisis that is damaging people’s health, as well as the wave of looming strikes over pay. “People are really scared,” said the chief executive of a central NHS trust in England. “I’m talking to senior clinicians and consultants and nurses who are absolutely terrified and petrified of what’s to come,” added the hospital boss, speaking on condition of anonymity. Staff are concerned because of “the potential impact of Covid and flu, the impact of industrial action, the impact on the cost of living, the impact on people’s health from this, [and] the massive increases in mental health needs and the collapse of primary care and social care’. Directors of other NHS trusts in England said they shared this grim prognosis. They are preparing to curtail and cancel services on days when staff stop working for pay, including outpatients and non-urgent surgeries. The NHS will face an “assault” this winter, one has said. Nurses in most hospitals and other NHS services across the UK are set to strike next month. Another trust boss said that while they could face a walkout by nurses, a strike by Unison members – the result of its staff vote is due next week – could make it impossible for services to run anywhere close to normal flat. “Services will inevitably go hand in hand,” they said. Six in seven (86%) hospital managers are concerned that they will not be able to meet the strong demand for care they are set to face in the coming year, given the increasing pressures. Similarly, 85% are more worried about this winter than any before, according to a survey of 183 senior managers at 121 trusts in England by hospital group NHS Providers. Large majorities are also concerned about staff shortages (77%), their trust’s staff at burnout (93%) and a lack of investment in social care (94%). The Guardian reported on Monday how up to a third of beds in some hospitals are occupied by patients who are medically fit to be discharged but cannot leave because a lack of social care locally means they are not safe to return home or in the care home. The head of a hospital where around three in 10 beds cannot be used for a new arrival, therefore said it was a big false economy to allow social care to become so inadequate because it costs £500 a night for a person in hospital, but £250 for those in a care home and even less – £50 – for domestic workers looking after them at home. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Meanwhile, the NHS has come under fire over how it is using its record £152.6 billion budget after new research showed it is treating fewer patients from its 7.1 million patient backlog than expected. “NHS spending in England is, in real terms, 12% above the level in 2019. However, it is taking fewer people off waiting lists and into hospital care than it managed in 2019. “That’s one reason why waiting lists have risen to levels 60%, or 2.6 million, above where they were before the pandemic,” said Ben Zaranko, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The NHS’s struggle to increase the number of scheduled operations it carries out means the waiting list will peak at around 8 million and not start to fall until the end of 2023, even though fewer people than expected have joined the list, it estimates thinktank in analysis. But Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents care providers, said hospital bosses were “working brilliantly to tackle the delays”. Highlighting 132,000 staff vacancies across health services and the £500m not arriving so far, ministers have pledged to boost social care in a bid to reduce the number of ‘delayed discharge’ patients before winter.
