Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox
Get our free View from Westminster email
Get our free View from Westminster email
The health secretary revealed 53,000 NHS staff were off sick in just one week at the start of this year as he hit out at the “unacceptable” care patients received.
Wes Streeting said they had been “let down” by being treated in makeshift wards and left waiting for hours for ambulances.
But he warned the scale of the problem was such that he could not rule out patients still being treated in corridors next winter.
He warned too many are suffering without the safety and dignity they should expect “at a minimum”.
Mr Streeting also urged the public to get a flu vaccine, saying it was not too late. An investigation by The Independent at the weekend found pharmacists were having difficulties stocking the jabs, as cases soar.
He also expressed disappointment at vaccination levels among NHS staff, saying they were “lower than we would like or expect”.
His statement to the Commons on Wednesday came after several NHS trusts declared critical incidents because of sustained pressure in A&E departments during the most recent cold snap.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has said many of the 54,207 patients waiting longer than 12 hours following a decision to admit them in December received care in temporary environments, such as corridors or chairs.
The health secretary said ministers would “never accept or tolerate” people being treated in “unsafe, undignified” conditions but that it would “take time to undo the damage” done to the NHS.
He hit out at corridor care which he said had become “normalised in NHS hospitals under the previous government”.
He told MPs: “I want to be clear, I will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors. It is unsafe, undignified, a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.
“I cannot and will not promise that there won’t be patients treated in corridors next year. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS, but that is the ambition this government has.”
Mr Streeting told the House the experience of patients this winter has been “unacceptable” and the NHS is facing a “toxic cocktail of pressures”.
He said: “I visited one A&E department over Christmas, where I was told on the way in that I was lucky as I had come on a quiet day, yet as I walked through the hospital, I saw patients on trolleys lining the corridors where they were being treated without the dignity or safety they should expect as a minimum.
“I saw frail elderly people on beds in the emergency department, many with dementia, crying out in pain and confusion because ultimately, they were in the wrong place for their care needs. This was supposedly a good day.”
Over the last week, critical incidents were declared in hospitals in Northamptonshire, Cornwall, Liverpool, Hampshire, Birmingham, Plymouth and the Wirral.
These allow a hospital to prioritise staff, money and attention towards the emergency department, by putting off other services such as elective surgeries and appointments.
Mr Streeting said the NHS was now using critical incidents to “focus minds” and “get the system responding to de-escalate and steer them back to safer waters”.
He said there was currently just one live critical incident, down from 24 last week.
His Conservative opposite number Edward Argar accused Mr Streeting of failing to put in the work to prepare the NHS for winter.
The health secretary hit back, accusing Mr Argar of being an “arsonist criticising the fire brigade for not doing enough”.
+ There are no comments
Add yours