Hospitals Told To Cancel All Routine Operations As NHS Winter Crisis Escalates

[T_i_B]

I know that there is a lot of lurgy out there, but this is really bad.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nhs-hospitals-non-urgent_uk_5a4bcd09e4b025f99e1e0b14

Struggling hospitals have been told to cancel all routine surgery until the end of January amid fears of a winter NHS meltdown.

The National Emergency Pressures Panel, which is chaired by the NHS’s top doctor Sir Bruce Keogh, said the NHS has been under “sustained pressure” over Christmas and needs to free up doctors and nurses to deal with the sickest patients. Officials have estimated that this could lead to up to 55,000 deferred operations, such as hip replacements.

Cancer operations and time-critical procedures should go ahead as planned, NHS England said.

The delay had already been in force until mid-January, but the panel says the deferral of all ‘non-urgent’ care will now be extended to January 31. Hospitals have now been told to cancel any day-case and outpatient procedures, which would not require an overnight bed and where patients would typically walk out after being seen. It also announced that penalties for mixed sex accommodation breaches should be temporarily lifted.

[LeftishBrit]

1. This is worrying and infuriating

It's not as if no one was aware that more people get ill in winter than at other times; and it was already known that there has already been a bad flu in Australia.

The combination of cuts; Brexit scaring off EU citizens from working for the NHS; and Jeremy *unt alienating the junior doctors has resulted in the NHS being on the brink of disaster, if not beyond it.

[T_i_B]

2. There's definitely more illness out there

Last edited Sat Jan 13, 2018, 05:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Wherever I go at the moment, it seems that the main topic of conversation is who's got cold and flu symptoms. And a LOT of people have been affected. Never known a winter like it for colds, flu and other illness.

But that isn't the only factor causing this. The way the NHS has been managed is also clearly a factor.

[blacklisted]

3. NHS is being broken on purpose ...

NHS is being sabotaged from inside and from outside, including the very top of successive governments.
The goal is to make it so unreliable that the only option will be to adopt the American model of private insurance based health care.