Prof Christina PagelA fediverse THREAD on latest NHS situation in England: Ambluance times, A&E, Waiting lists...
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Ambulance wait times across the board are the worst they've been for a very long time.
Graph shows category "C2" - not quite life or death, but potentially. Target is 18 minutes wait, but average is now over an hour. Almost 80 minutes in the Midlands and the SW. 2/
Once you get to A&E, waits to be seen are longer than ever. 31% of people now wait longer than 4 hours (target is 5%!).
Unsurprisingly about 5-6% of people leave before being seen - some of those really needed to be seen.
Over 8% of people wait longer than *12 hours* - up from basically 0% pre pandemic.
3/
One of the big issues causing these long waits is that hospitals are full and finding it difficult to discharge people ready to go - often frail older people who have nowhere safe to go with a broken social care system.
About 25% of beds in general wards are occupied by adults otherwise fit to be discharged.
Just since April this year, that's an extra 300,000 days in hospital for patients staying at least a week longer than doctors thought they needed to. 4/
Of course, many people aren't even getting in to hospital for either inpatient or outpatient care.
1.5 million people are waiting for diagnostic tests (30% longer than 6 weeks).
Over 7 million people (1 in 8 of entire population) are waiting for treatment - the highest number ever. 5/
In terms of people waiting longer than 6 weeks for diagnostic tests by type of test, these are all important tests to determine potentially serious issues. The target is 2% across the board. None of the test types are near that target. 6/
This is even affecting cancer services, where waits have been steadily increasing since the start of the pandemic.
25% of patients are now waiting longer than the target of 2 weeks to see a specialist after urgent GP referral. 7/
And finally... what is increasingly a broken health care system is - unsurprisingly - having an effect on the health of our population. Adding to the considerable number of people who report being severely affected by Long Covid (ONS reckons about 340K as of Oct 2022).
The number of working aged people economically inactive because of ill health - already increasing pre-2020 - is going up ever faster.
This is bad news for them, bad news for the NHS and bad news for our economy. 8/
Some of it is 2.5 years of Covid, some of it is lack of investment over years, some of it is staff burn out & cost of living combined with years of stagnant wages. Far too many NHS staff are needing food banks.
What can we do? One thing is to wear a mask in public crowded spaces where possible - reduce NHS burden by not getting sick or making others sick (regardless of which virus!).
Another is write to your MP to ask for NHS action!
And - support nurses! /END
PS thanks to Bob Hawkins for producing the charts for this thread
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦@chrischirp Thank you for this!
Jane Johnson (books)@chrischirp And yet Cornwall Council advice makes no mention of masks and our local surgery, and hospital public spaces, are mask-free. I queried the councillor responsible for health and was told they were focusing on hand-washing and vaccines 'to keep the messaging simple'. I despair.
Gale@ExC_Gale @chrischirp I mean, what hope is there is even our medical professionals are such minimisers?
@JaneJohnsonBakr @chrischirp Exactly. 😐
Benjamin S-B 
@chrischirp terrifying and infuriating in equal measures. As a parent I'm terrified of my child having some kind of accident that requires hospital care. The fact that this isn't headline news every day days more about the rotten state of our media landscape than anything.
TerryAdirimMD@bensb @chrischirp This is the point that most people miss/ignore - that even a healthy person can unexpectedly need emergency care in a system clogged with Covid cases.😑
Marciano Siniscalchi 🇺🇦@chrischirp I really like your advice to wear a mask to not get sick and not make other people sick --*whatever the virus*. Common courtesy, and smart.
AutisticMumTo3
Riikka Savolainen@chrischirp in addition, any measures increasing the supply of social care (e.g. putting it in the shortage occupation list) would help to free up NHS places.
Jim Parkin
Chris McCabe
C Martin@chrischirp spot on as always
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@chrischirp "Public crowded spaces" ... no ta.
Actually we are meeting some other people today, which we don't do very often. Who are also shielding. In an uncrowded outdoor location (the middle of a forest).
David@chrischirp everyone talks about the cost of the health service, but not about the cost of not having a functioning health service. When people can't get the treatment they need when they need it the economy and society as a whole suffer just as much as the individual concerned. Proper funding for the NHS is the right thing to do, medically, economically, and morally.
Elisabeth RevansThe situation in mental health is also appalling. Our local A&Es are full of extremely mentally unwell patients on s136 of the MHA awaiting beds, looked after by police in the interim as there is no secure environment for them. The ones in a&e not on s136 (and therefore with no police) but in need of admission under the MHA are even worse off. We have had several awful incidents of people leaving A&E before a bed was found and harming themselves severely this week.