NHS in meltdown as A&E records the worst month for waiting times EVER
The budget recently revealed an injection of £100million into the NHS in an attempt to ease pressure
NEARLY 1,000 patients were forced to wait more than 12 hours to be admitted to A&E departments in the worst ever waiting times to plague the embattled NHS.
Official figures further revealed the number of patients being seen within four hours slid to 85 per cent - with Government targets missed every month since July 2015.
According to the latest NHS statistics, 988 people were kept waiting for an extended time - more than six times the figure in January last year.
The flagging statistics come after Chancellor Philip Hammond pledged £100million to station family doctors on site in hospitals in the budget - but leading medics warned the plan would do little to help struggling hospitals.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth : "These NHS performance statistics are a damning indictment of Theresa May’s neglect of our NHS."
He added: "She’s overseen an unprecedented winter crisis, in which almost a thousand people waited over twelve hours on trolleys, compared to just 17 in January 2011.
"Yesterday’s Budget announcement should have been an opportunity to genuinely place the NHS on a sustainable footing - and yet the Chancellor’s mere offer of £100million for capital funding simply isn’t enough, meaning the NHS will continue facing its biggest financial squeeze in history and head-for-head investment will fall again next year."
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The new figures also revealed that delays in leaving hospital due to social care have doubled in five years.
NHS boss Simon Stevens recently wrote to health chiefs, urging action to tackle the dire A&E figures.
He said health executives must "immediately" engage with social care departments to work out how to help patients stuck in hospital.
Critics recently warned that the budget's cash injection would do nothing to improve the dire situation faced by the health service.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of The Patients Association, said: “(The) Budget has set the NHS and social care system on course for a continuing crisis in the coming years.”
GPs' wait times go on show
By SHAUN WOOLLER
THE NHS will publish league tables of the average waiting times for an appointment at all UK GPs’ surgeries.
Chief executive Simon Stevens told MPs yesterday that people should have access to the information when booking for routine conditions.
He also stressed all surgeries must offer appointments outside 8am to 6pm within two years.
The Royal College of GPs has said some patients wait four weeks.
Its chair Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard said: “It is essential any data is used to improve the service and not as a stick to beat hard- working GPs with.
“We want to offer more services but this will not be possible with the pressures we are facing.”
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