NHS patients are at risk and waiting lists are getting longer due to $ 9 billion in backlogs and a severe lack of capital funding, which has made some parts of hospitals “extremely damaged” and unfit for patients, health leaders warned.
Boris Johnson promised in 2019 to “build and finance 40 new hospitals.” But the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), the government’s oversight body, later gave the project an “amber / red” rating, meaning that its implementation “is questionable with major risks or problems evident in a number of key areas”.
Meanwhile, the NHS in England is facing a £ 9bn lag in maintenance. Half of that amount, which rose from £ 6.5 billion just three years ago, is needed to tackle failures classified as ‘high’ or ‘significant’ risk to patients and staff.
Health leaders are now warning that without an urgent injection of capital funding, patient safety is at stake and the waiting list – exacerbated by the pandemic – will “grow even bigger”. In England alone, there are already 6.4 million people on the waiting list.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of this week’s NHS ConfedExpo conference in Liverpool, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the entire healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the crisis had become extremely serious.
Taylor warned that patient safety, as well as the NHS’s ability to handle waiting lists, were “severely hampered” as the UK was “threatened” by one of the worst records for capital investment in healthcare in all countries. from the OECD over the last decade.
“NHS leaders share the government’s commitment to further increase NHS efficiency and productivity and are doing everything possible to address the care lag that has accumulated in recent years, but they have been hampered in their efforts by a lack of capital funding. which is now a big barrier, “he said.
“The huge gap in NHS’s capital budget, combined with decades of underinvestment in property, infrastructure and IT systems, has left the NHS with dilapidated buildings, long-term maintenance backlogs and limited potential to maximize digital use.”
In a new study of 182 health leaders from the NHS Confederation, nine out of 10 warn that underfunding harms their “ability to meet patient safety requirements” in hospitals, ambulances, public and mental health services, GP practices and other health facilities.
They urge the government to speed up access to capital funding, already promised by ministers, and to invest further in the autumn budget. Unless they do, NHS leaders warn, the backlog of elective care will worsen before it improves.
A chair of the NHS Trust in London said in a study this month that the “narrow” space means that trust does not “build our capacity to deal with waiting lists” and that conditions for patients in some wards are inappropriate. “.
The clinical director of primary care in the southeast added: “We have been working in a health center since the 1950s on a tin roof serving 34,000 patients without the ability to provide appropriate 21st century health care. Our ability to meet patient expectations and political promises is impossible unless significant investments are made in infrastructure.
“It’s like promising society a safe, efficient, modern car, and when they go to get it back, they find a 1970s Ford Escort with a rusty roof, a squeaky engine designed to take four people, but it has to carries 10 and without anyone to service or drive it. “
Taylor added: “The government urgently needs to unlock the capital funding that has already been promised so that it can finally start working up and down the country on new buildings, as well as tackling the backlog.
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“We need to be ahead of the package when it comes to the amount we invest in capital compared to other OECD countries, instead of falling behind as we are now. Failure to do so will mean that patient treatment goals will be missed, the waiting list will increase further and patient safety may be jeopardized.
The warning from the NHS Confederation came as the report estimates that more than 1,000 patients spend more than 12 hours in A&E wards each day.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has published data showing that in 2021, an average of 1,047 patients a day waited 12 hours or more from the time of arrival. The college expressed concern about the “alarming” levels of patients in the emergency department, as it described current data on 12-hour waits as the “tip of the iceberg”.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Welfare said: “We are providing the largest one-generation hospital building program, with a target of 48 hospitals by 2030. We are also investing £ 1.7 billion by 2025 for over 70 improvements to hospitals in England and in 2020/21 we invested a record £ 895 million in tackling critical infrastructure risk, which included funding for nearly 1,800 emergency maintenance projects in over 170 trusts.
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