Doctors warn of ‘round-the-year crisis’

Having seen an emphasis placed on winter pressures, the British Medical Association (BMA) has highlighted a ‘round-the-year crisis’ in the NHS after projections pointed towards a summer of strain.

Modelling both ‘best’ and ‘worse’ case scenarios for the NHS, the BMA analysis of five years of official figures pointed towards a best-case scenario of services this summer facing pressures similar to those in the winter of 2015, whilst the worst would be akin to those in winter 2016.

Although summer months have previously offered a degree of respite for NHS services, but BMA council chair Chaand Nagpaul said that the ‘winter crisis’ has been replaced by a ‘year-round crisis’.

He said: “Doctors and patients have just endured one of the worst winters on record, resulting in thousands of cancelled operations, unacceptable long waits to be seen and people who are already at their most vulnerable having to face the indignity of being treated in hospital corridors. These scenes have become an all-too-familiar occurrence, each year, stretching further into spring and appearing again earlier the next winter. We cannot accept that this is the new normal for the NHS.”