2025 has certainly started with a raft of Government announcements and frankly they have not been good news.
Our NHS is clearly in crisis but instead of providing emergency funding for the NHS, Keir Starmer’s Government has agreed a long-term deal with the private health sector worth an estimated £2.5 billion of public money to help reduce waiting lists, rather than expand the NHS, much better placed, to do this.
It was hard to ignore the damning and distressing report from the Royal College of Nursing that dominated the media recently. It certainly revealed the depth of the crisis in the NHS, where treating patients in corridors has become the norm in A&Es.
Despite Health Secretary Wes Streeting, saying he feels “ashamed” by the experience of some patients of the NHS this winter, he refused to commit to immediate resources in a recent debate – “We cannot and will not promise that there will not be patients treated in corridors next year.”
Ironically, the worse it gets in A&Es, the more resources are taken away from elective care and waiting lists go up!
You might like to read this excellent and very powerful article from Dr Emma Jones, an A&E Consultant based in the Midlands.
WAITING LIST PLAN LIKELY TO MAKE THINGS WORSE:
John Lister, long time national campaigner and co-editor of ‘the Lowdown NHS’ explains in his latest article why the Governments ‘Elective Reform Plan’ will actually make thing worse. Instead of expanding the NHS, which provides the overwhelming majority of elective care as well as emergency and diagnostic services, the Government’s focus is on cutting waiting lists by using private providers.
The private sector is being asked to provide an extra 1 million appointments a year, on top of the 5 million appointments and treatments it provides now – no wonder they are happy! The Guardian estimates this means an extra £2.5 billion flowing out of the NHS.
However, this will undermine the NHS by diverting both funds and staff, since the private sector relies heavily on using NHS trained doctors, and will undermine other core aspects of the NHS –
It is bad news for those with more complex health issues on the waiting list who only the NHS is equipped to treat – they will have to wait longer;
It does nothing for beleaguered emergency services;
It does nothing to address the gaps in mental health care;
It does nothing to address the chronic state of many hospitals, in danger of falling down, and now Wes Streeting has said that hospitals like St Marys and Charing Cross will have to wait until 2035 for desperately needed rebuilds!
You can read more on this story here
JOIN THE PROTEST – PATIENTS NOT PROFITS:
Nationally, Keep Our NHS Public is stepping up its campaigning against privatisation of our health services and in particular the Government’s New Deal with the private sector.
Please join Ealing Save Our NHS and other campaigners outside Parliament for a Rally for the NHS to tell Keir Starmer to invest in the NHS – not the private sector! We will be hearing from MPs, health campaigners, and others – please come and spread the word.
The Rally takes place after PMQs at 12pm on Wednesday 26 February, opposite the Houses of Parliament.
UPDATE ON EALING HOSPITAL:
We recently met with Mark Titcomb, the London North West Trust Managing Director for Ealing & Central Middx Hospitals who save us an update on services in Ealing Hospital and the Trust.
A&E waits and Pressures: Luckily, London hasn’t been hit as hard by flu and other viruses as other hospitals around the country so it was reassuring to hear that Ealing Hospital is managing to cope with winter pressures, although it’s very busy. Ealing has extra winter beds – a small silver lining from the previous closures of paediatric services.
On the bad side, the waits for mental health treatments are worsening due to the shortage of acute beds (33 beds closed in Ealing and 13 lost overall). In one case it meant a mental health patient waited in A&E for two days until a suitable bed was available.
The new Ealing Community Diagnostic Centre is now pretty much at full tilt and welcomed its 2000th patient just before Xmas. They are getting great feedback and provide CT MRI, Dexa scans, Ultrasound, X-Ray, cardiology, lung function and blood tests – with more to be added in Spring. Referrals are mostly from GPs directly. It covers North West London but is based at Ealing Hospital so is especially good for us in Ealing.
North West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre: This Central Middlesex based service has now been running for a year to shorten the wait for surgery and reduce stays in hospital. Over 3,000 patients from across North West London have passed through this ‘fast track surgical hub’ mostly having knee and hip replacements – without the need to use the expensive private sector Mr Streeting!
Shortages of Staff have meant that the Trust has had to use radiologists, anaesthetists and ENT staff from the private sector as well as to farm out test analysis abroad. Hopefully planned recruitment will alleviate this.
History of Ealing Hospital Exhibition – A free public exhibition about the history of Ealing Hospital and its predecessors including Ealing Cottage Hospital is now on show in the hospital’s Galleria area on Floor Three.
You can get a flavour of it here
BACK ON THE STREETS IN EALING:
Ealing Save Our NHS took our colourful street stall to Ealing Broadway last week, our first in 2025. February is a month of action for ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ groups, like us, so we gave out lots of KONP’s latest leaflet, which calls on the Government to fund the NHS, not the private sector!
We also collected lots more Postcard to MPs. Quite a few people expressed disappointment with Keir Starmer’s Government on the NHS and were expecting a commitment to properly fund it.
‘COMPASSIONATE CARE FOR ALL’ – GOOD NEWS FOR SOME BUT NOT OTHERS:
NHS North West London NHS (ICB) is currently consulting the public on options to improve adult community specialist palliative care services. These are services to provide relief and support for people with serious or life limiting illnesses. Care can be in a hospice, at home or elsewhere in the community such as care homes.
NHS NW London’s stated aim is to deliver services that meet people’s needs, are fair and accessible and provide better care and outcomes for patients and their families.
Some of the service improvements being proposed are: –
- 24/7 specialist phone advice – currently only 9 -5pm for Ealing residents
- Hospice at home, provided by specialist teams – we don’t have this in Ealing, only general support from GPs, District nurses etc
- 46 new enhanced end of life beds, for those who don’t need hospice inpatient care, across all Borough. Ealing we will get around 9 of these beds. They will also be used to provide respite care.
- Dedicated bereavement and psychological support – very patchy in Ealing.
In Ealing we are fortunate to have Meadow House, an NHS funded hospice that provides excellent specialist palliative and end of life care and 15 inpatient beds. These services will be on top of that.
Unfortunately, the preferred option (Option A) for NHS North West London is to permanently close the 13 specialist inpatient beds at the Pembridge Hospice in North Kensington – despite an aging population and growing numbers of people living alone. Therefore we support Option B which includes reopening these beds.
ESON has submitted comments and questions and our supporters have participated in the consultation meetings, which were better than previous consultations.
However basic questions remain about the funding and staffing needed to deliver the services, which are not addressed in any of the documents.
The Consultation closes on 24th February 2025 – you can still have your say by filling in the survey here
More details on the plans here –
STOP PATIENTS DYING IN CORRIDORS – PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION’ by ‘We Own It’
This is a call on the Government to respond to the emergency in our hospitals and re-open the 100+ urgent and emergency centres, including 24 A&Es that have been cut.
Please sign the petition here –
