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NHS - the facts
by Martin Phillips
If you just read the coverage of the NHS in the media, you would think that the NHS was in complete meltdown, with job cuts everywhere and things in crisis. But if you have been in a hospital recently, or your doctor’s surgery, do things look as if they are in crisis?
I wouldn’t pretend that there aren’t problems in the NHS. There are a large nmber of trusts (primary care, hospitals and others) that are running a deficit. The fact is that there have always been NHS trusts that overspend - but in the old days the NHS used to use money from underspending trusts to bail out the overspenders.This year, health ministers have asked each trust to stay within the budgets that they themselves agreed.
I thought a quick list of the facts would have you to understand the problems, and also allow you to rebut the “facts” being quoted by the media and our opponents. We need to make people understand that the problems are relatively small and they are not “government cuts”. SO here are some facts:
- the government is NOT cutting NHS spending - it is increasing it at 7% a year and the total NHS budget is nearly 3 times what it was 10 years ago
- most NHS trusts are not over-spending - only 17% are in defeicit, and many of those only for small amounts
- there are a few NHS trusts that are massively over-spent, and sadly many of these are in the SE. These trusts have NOT had their money cut - they have had more money, but are still over-spending because of poor financial control (as confirmed by the independent Health Commission ratings)
- Labour is NOT cutting back health spending in the south to give money to the NHS in Labour areas. The NHS nationwide uses a single funding formula, and in fact the NHS in Labour areas is often underspent, sending the balances back to be used to bail out badly run southern health trusts
- there are NOT going to be 20,000 redundancies in the NHS - even the Tories have now admitted that their figures were wrong, as this story shows:
TORIES ADMIT 20,000 JOB LOSS CLAIM WAS LIE
Following a strong campaign from Labour’s Health team, Tory Health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, finally used accurate figures in the debate over NHS job numbers.
In a debate with Labour’s Andy Burnham on Sky News this morning, Lansley admitted that despite an increase in NHS staff of 300,000 since 1997 there have been just: “900 staff in the NHS have been made compulsorily redundant”, during this period of reform.
This is in stark contrast to the deliberate attempts by the Tories to alarm the public by claiming 21,000 jobs were being lost.
Indeed, the Department of Health figures show that even of 900 made compulsorily redundant, only 167 were clinical staff.
And let’s not forget the important figures - the lives saved and the suffering prevented:
- 93% more heart operations
- 94% more cataract operations
- 43% more hip replacements -
- virtually nobody waiting more than 6 months - down by nearly 284,000 since 97.
- waits for cataracts down to three months, down from up to 2 years.
- waits for heart operations down to less than three months.
- A&E waits - 19 out of 20 spend less than 4 hours in A&E.
- 99.3% of cancer patients are treated within a month of diagnosis.
- cancer death rates down by 15.7% from 1995-97 baseline saving over 50,000 lives.
- deaths rates from heart disease down by 35.9% from 1995-97 - saving 150,000 lives.