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Patients being treated in hospital corridors is the shame of the NHS, Wes Streeting has said, as a new poll indicates satisfaction with the health service has hit a record low.
The health secretary, who has spent this week visiting accident and emergency departments across the country amid a surge of flu cases, said he was left feeling a “combination of pride and shame”. He said he met one patient – an elderly woman – who had spent 30 hours in a corridor on a trolley.
The health secretary’s remarks come as a new survey found that just 31 per cent of adults are satisfied with the service provided by GPs and hospitals – a historic low for NHS satisfaction ratings.
The previous low for public satisfaction was 34 per cent in 1997, just before Tony Blair took office.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos for The Sunday Times, showed that satisfaction with the health service is higher among older groups, with 42 per cent of those aged 75 and over feeling satisfied.
Just 27 per cent of those aged 35 to 44 were satisfied with the NHS, while the figure was just 26 per cent for those suffering from a long-term health condition.
Mr Streeting said: “Under the Conservatives, the ‘NHS winter crisis’ came as consistently as the John Lewis ads and the Coca-Cola truck. No wonder [The] Sunday Times poll shows public satisfaction in the NHS at rock bottom.”
Reflecting on his visit to A&E departments, he added: “As I reflect on these visits I feel a combination of pride and shame. Pride in the people who work in our National Health Service, who bust a gut to give people the best possible care.
“Shame at the sight of people on trolleys in corridors, many of their waits avoidable if the right care had been available closer to home — often in their homes.”
He also said Labour had “hit the ground running” since it won a historic election victory in July.
“Our immediate action to resolve the doctors’ strikes means this is the first winter in three years with staff on the front line, rather than the picket line.
“We’ve gone hell for leather on vaccination, with the flu and Covid vaccines now joined by the RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] vaccine for the first time. NHS community trusts and ambulance services are innovating to divert people from unnecessary A&E attendances and ambulance call-outs.”
But he added: “There’s so much more to do: to stabilise our community pharmacies, to improve mental health and to tackle the crisis in social care. It will take time. We’ve only been in power for less than six months. A lot done, a hell of a lot more to do.”
It comes amid warnings from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that the situation could worsen as we head into winter, with the organisation’s president Dr Adrian Boyle accusing the government of failing to make emergency care a “political priority”.
“Since last year, our worry is that we’ve gone backwards,” he said. “Last year, we estimated, based on scientific evidence, that nearly 14,000 additional deaths occurred because of long stays in emergency departments… I am worried that it could be worse than that.”
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