NHS should lose 30,000 beds according to ‘Reform’ report

It’s obvious something needs to be done if only to reassure the public that the headlines of increased death rates, lack of cleanliness and shortage of beds are the exception, not the rule. The NHS is an impressive and envied institution which is often unfairly derided but also we must accept that action is needed in order to prevent it suffocating under the increasing strain of trying to provide a comprehensive health service in increasingly difficult times. Not least in a tricky economy but also due to rising costs as a result of medical and technological advances.

Healthcare is an emotive issue causing many of us to veer between being at a complete loss of how the problem should be handled due to the sheer enormity of the task and coming up with simplistic solutions such as chucking more money at it (even though billions of pounds have been pumped in to the NHS over the last 10 years) or maybe cutting the number of managers and providing more beds and medical staff. Some may argue that the NHS should look towards the purpose it was created, to provide healthcare for all regardless of income, which until then (1942) was expensive and exclusive to the few who could afford treatment. But has the net been cast too far by including procedures such as plastic surgery when life saving drugs need to be rationed?

The main question on any potential patient’s lips is; how can we make the NHS better? Over the last decade the number of doctors and nurses has been increased by tens of thousands. Yet, it is still in crisis, so clearly a rethink is required and quickly.

Any solutions, whether considered to be ‘thinking outside the box’ or general common sense are welcomed, but most people have been caught off-guard by the recent report ‘Fewer Hospitals, More Competition’ published in March by the right-wing think tank ‘Reform’. The report controversially suggests cutting over 30,000 hospital beds across London, the North East and North West of England, sending more patients home to be treated in the community. The reasoning is that fewer beds will improve standards by freeing up staff to treat in-patients. Possibly not better for those who were sent home!

The report may prove useful as a wake-up call to politicians that they need to come up with some workable ideas, however it offers little in the way of reassurance, merely setting off warning bells over the current lack of beds, conjuring uncomfortable images of older patients waiting in corridors for treatment.

With an election looming the NHS may feature heavily, but action may be scarce. The question of ‘restructuring’ has been bandied around by politicians for many years, but so far no party seems willing to risk getting it wrong. In order for the NHS to survive either in its current incarnation or a streamlined entity, a cure will have to be administered soon.

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