Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he is ‘genuinely distressed and ashamed’ after hearing the impact of ‘exceptionally high demands’ as hospitals say they’re struggling with high demands
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has admitted he feels “ashamed” of the treatment some patients get from the NHS.
He admitted some people are being taken to hospital “to die” because the right care is not available when they need it. NHS trusst across the UK have been forced to declare critical incidents due to “exceptionally high demands” in emergency departments.
Mr Streeting admitted he felt “emotional” hearing about long waits and patients being passed from ambulance to ambulance. Speaking on LBC Radio, Mr Streeting said: “I am never going to pretend for as long as I’ve got this job, that when there are problems, that everything’s all right… I feel genuinely distressed and ashamed, actually, of some of the things that patients are experiencing, and I know that the staff of the NHS and social care services feel the same.”
The Health Secretary went on: “It breaks my heart because… I’ve seen this when I’ve been shadowing the ambulance service on ride outs – we are taking people in ambulances to emergency departments to die because then there isn’t the right care available at the right time in the right place, including end-of-life care.”
Describing on harrowing case he said: “When I hear you describe an 88-year-old woman going from ambulance to ambulance to ambulance to ambulance, I felt the same emotional reaction I went felt when I was going around one of my local hospitals just before Christmas – when I went in, they said: ‘You are here on a fairly good day, it’s not too bad today.’
“And as I was walking through the emergency department, I was looking at the corridor care that’s become a normal feature now in our hospitals, I went through a section of the emergency department where there were lots of frail elderly people, including people with dementia, who were very confused, very distressed, crying out, not so much in pain as much as confusion. And as I walked around these conditions, I was looking around thinking: ‘This is a good day?”‘
The minister pledged to do “everything I can” to “make sure that year-on-year, we see consistent improvement”, but he said that it will “take time”. He said that the Government would publish an urgent and emergency reform plan “shortly”.
On flu, Mr Streeting added: “We’ve got this extraordinary pressure on flu where we’ve got between three and four times as many hospital beds taken up with flu cases this year than we did this time last year. Even so, annual winter pressures should not lead to an annual winter crisis.”
Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust declared critical incidents on Tuesday morning, followed by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board on Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital remains in a critical incident state following an announcement by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group on Monday evening. The longest time one patient waited to be admitted to a ward at the hospital was 50 hours, it is understood. Elsewhere, a critical incident declared by NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly on Friday continues.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told PA: “This flu season is not an outlier, but the problem is our emergency care system is so overwhelmed and fragile that a normal flu season – which is what we’ve got at the moment – is creating severe operational difficulties.
“And it would be a mistake to think that this is solely a result of winter viruses. We have been chronically overloaded and overwhelmed for a number of years. It is a significant flu outbreak, but the problem is there’s just no capacity to deal with it. So it is really a straw that is breaking the camel’s back.”
Critical incidents can be declared when health and care services are so busy that special measures are needed to restore normal operations and keep patients safe.
A number of trusts posted on X to warn that their emergency departments were very busy, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust and Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust.
At 10pm on Tuesday, South West Ambulance Service posted on X saying: “We know there are patients waiting for an ambulance, and we will get to them as soon as we can.” They asked people to call again only if they no longer need help or if the patient’s condition has worsened while they are waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Last week, NHS data revealed the number of people in hospital with flu in England was more than four times the level it was a month ago, with officials warning cases are “rising at a very concerning rate”.
