NHS patients are in danger and waiting lists are being extended even further due to a £ 9bn maintenance delay and a significant lack of capital funding that has left some parts of hospitals ” extremely deteriorated “and not suitable for patients, health leaders have warned.
Boris Johnson promised in 2019 to “build and fund 40 new hospitals.” But the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), the government control body, later gave the project an “amber / red” rating, meaning that its delivery is in doubt with significant risks or obvious problems in several key areas “.
At the same time, the NHS in England is facing a £ 9bn maintenance delay. Half of that amount, which exceeds £ 6.5 billion just three years ago, is needed to deal with failures classified as “high” or “significant” risk for patients and staff.
Health leaders now warn that without an urgent injection of capital funding, patient safety is at risk and the waiting list for care, made worse by the pandemic, “will grow even more.” There are already 6.4 million people on the waiting list in England alone.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of this week’s NHS ConfedExpo conference in Liverpool, Matthew Taylor, the executive director of the NHS Confederation, which represents the entire healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the crisis had become extremely severe.
Patient safety, as well as NHS’s ability to cope with record waiting lists, is being “severely impaired,” Taylor warned, because the UK has been “affected” by one of the worst records of capital investment in health in all OECD countries over the past decade.
“NHS leaders share the government’s commitment to further increase the efficiency and productivity of the NHS and are doing their utmost to address the backlog of attention that has accumulated in recent years.” but they are hampered in their efforts by the lack of capital funding which is now a major barrier, ”he said.
“The huge abyss in the NHS’s capital budget combined with a decade of low investment in goods, infrastructure and computer systems has left the NHS with dilapidated buildings, a significant maintenance delay and limited potential to maximize use of digital technology “.
In a new survey of 182 NHS Confederation health leaders, nine out of 10 warn that insufficient capital funding is hurting their “ability to meet patient safety requirements” in hospitals, ambulances, community and mental health services. , GP practices and other healthcare settings. .
They urge the government to speed up access to capital funding already pledged by ministers, as well as to invest more in the autumn budget. Unless they do, NHS leaders warn, the delay in elective care will get worse before it gets better.
An NHS trust chair in London told the poll, conducted this month, that the “narrow” space means that trust is not “increasing our ability to cope with waiting lists” and that the conditions of the patients in some wards “were not suitable for their purpose.” ”.
A Southeast primary care clinical director added: “We are working on a 1950s canopy roof health center serving 34,000 patients without the capacity to provide adequate health care for the purpose of the 21st century. Our ability to meet patient expectations and policy promises is impossible without significant investment in infrastructure.
“It’s like promising the public a safe, efficient and modern car, and when they pick it up, they find a 70’s Ford Escort with a rusty roof, a hissing engine, designed for four people, but with the obligation to to carry 10 of them and without anyone to serve or drive it. “
Taylor added: “The government urgently needs to unblock the capital funding that has already been promised so that it can finally start working up and down the country on new construction, as well as addressing the maintenance backlog.
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“We should be ahead of the group in terms of how much we invest in capital compared to other OECD countries instead of lagging behind as we are today. If we don’t do that, we will lose the goals of patient treatment, the waiting list will increase further and patient safety could be jeopardized. “
The NHS Confederation’s warning came when a report suggested that more than 1,000 patients spend more than 12 hours in A&E departments every day.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) released figures showing that by 2021, 1,047 patients a day, on average, were waiting 12 hours or more from the time of arrival. The university expressed concern about the “alarming” levels of patients in the emergency services, as it described current data on 12-hour waits as the “tip of the iceberg”.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are offering the largest hospital building program in a generation, with a target of 48 hospitals by 2030. We are also investing £ 1.7 billion by 2025 for more than 70 hospital improvements in England and in 2020/21 we invested a record £ 895 million to address critical infrastructure risk, which included funding for nearly 1,800 urgent maintenance projects in over 170 trusts.