Wednesday 2 November 2022 01:34 PM NHS is struggling more NOW than during Covid, its boss says trends now
The NHS will come under more pressure in the months and years ahead than it did during the pandemic, its chief executive has said.
Amanda Pritchard issued her stark warning as she confirmed she is negotiating with ministers for more funding, adding: 'They are aware NHS budgets will only stretch so far.'
Health service officials are seeking to close a £7billion funding gap next year, which has been fuelled by soaring inflation and costly staff pay rises.
A record 7million people in England, one in eight of the population, are on waiting lists, with fears the backlog could keep rising until 2025.
Hospitals are battling to bring the numbers down in the face of widespread staff shortages, with around one in ten posts unfilled.
HM Treasury data shows the NHS received £100.4billion in 2010/11 and its budget had grown steadily until 2019. In 2020, the NHS was given £129.7billion of core funding for its usual services, which was topped up with an extra £18billion to help with the pressures from the pandemic. For 2021/22 the Treasury said the health service is set to receive £136.1billion pounds of core funding, as well as £3billion to help with the Covid recovery
Amanda Pritchard (left) issued her stark warning as she confirmed she is negotiating with ministers for more funding. Rishi Sunak (right) told a Cabinet meeting yesterday that while other departments should expect cuts, the Government will 'always support' the NHS, which will 'continue to be prioritised'
Mrs Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, told a conference of health leaders it is difficult 'not to be realistic about some of the challenges' the NHS faces both locally and nationally.
'When I started this job, I think I said at the time I thought that the pandemic would be the hardest thing any of us ever had to do,' she said.
'Over the last year, I've become really clear and I've said a number of times: it's where we are now.
'It's the months and years ahead that will bring the most complex challenges.
'And that isn't to take anything away, by the way, from just how tough particularly some of that early period of the pandemic was.
'But it's definitely proving to be the case, I think it is harder now. Why? Because, partly, we no longer have a single unifying mission.
'Instead, we are dealing with paradoxes, we're dealing with complexity and we are dealing with uncertainty.'
Mrs Pritchard told the King's Fund annual conference in central London she did not think patients always got the care they deserved.
'It's the question that's most likely to keep you up at night, it's most likely to motivate you in the morning.
'Are our patients getting the standard of care they deserve? We know we can't always answer yes to that question. We know we've got a job to do….'
The NHS waiting list for routine operations has breached 7million for the first time ever. This includes almost 390,000 patients who've been forced to wait over a year for treatment
Ambulances took an average of 47 minutes and 59 seconds to respond to category two calls , such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. This is more than twice as long as the 18 minute target
A&E waits have also breached a record, with the number of patients facing 12-hour waits exceeding 30,000
Last month, the care regulator said the health and care system had become 'gridlocked' — with just two in five patients able to leave
