Hunt brands NHS problems as ‘unacceptable’

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has conceded that the NHS is currently facing ‘completely unacceptable’ problems, as he expresses hope to ‘ease the burden’.

A series of reports in the New Year have highlighted how patients are being left for hours on trolleys as the lengthening waits in A&E soar to unacceptable levels. The BBC's NHS week revealed that the numbers waiting longer than they should for routine operations has risen by 163 per cent in four years, with nine in 10 hospitals having endured unsafe numbers of patients on their wards this winter.

Further details revealed show that record numbers of patients have waited more than four hours for A&E care, and that a lack of available community care has left patients stranded in hospitals for months.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Hunt said there were ‘no excuses’ for some of the figures and stories that have emerged from within the NHS crisis, and that the government has a plan to help hospitals cope, with treating more people ‘at home and in the community’ as key to easing the unprecedented pressure facing hospitals.

He continued to say that it was ‘frustrating’ that progress has been ‘disappointingly slow’ in some areas - such as care home integration and council-run care services - but assured that the Department of Health was ‘trying very hard to sort out these problems’. Tackling social care problems, he emphasised, was on the government's agenda.

Despite Hunt’s public reassurance, leading figures in the healths sector continue to warn that a care scandal was ‘inevitable’.

Speaking to Health Service Journal, Sir Robert Francis, who investigated failings in Mid Staffordshire and claimed that the NHS was facing an ‘existential crisis’, said that there was an ‘increasing disconnect’ between what is said nationally about the NHS and ‘what people on the ground feel or see is going on’.