The NHS is facing the bleakest midwinter

Public health interventions: the elephant in the room of the health system crisis

“…6 There are no easy or quick fixes to increasing the capacity of the health system. Health professionals take many years to train and almost every high-income country is in the same situation as us, 7,8 fighting over the same international pool of health professionals. 9 Recruiting healthcare workers from low-income countries, with less resilient health systems, to plug gaps in our own workforce is ethically dubious.…”

Surviving the new normal

“…Before the pandemic almost no one had to endure protracted delays in hospital emergency departments of more than 12 hours, unlike the estimated 7% of patients attending in England now (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2550). 1 There were more elective operations and fewer patients having their operations cancelled. There certainly weren’t seven million people waiting for elective treatment (doi:10.1136/bmj.o2574).…”

The NHS is failing us, but we are failing it too

“…In October, Kit Yates and I wrote about how the NHS was facing its bleakest midwinter 1. We highlighted how things were bleak and getting worse across the board, from emergency care, to secondary care, to primary care.…”