Lord Darzi’s Report: A worrying take on the current state of our NHS
12th Sep 2024
Lord Darzi, an independent peer and former NHS health surgeon, has just delivered a report following a nine-week review of the NHS which reflects the complaints that we see on a regular basis from our clients at McHale and Co.
The report said the NHS had been left chronically weakened by the policy of austerity of the 2010s and, in particular, a lack of investment in buildings and technology. This has left it with crumbling hospitals, fewer scanners than many other developed nations and years behind the private sector in terms of digital innovation.
This has contributed to falling levels of productivity in hospitals, with rises in staff not matched by increases in the numbers of patients being seen. It has meant hospitals have been sucking up an ever-increasing amount of the budget, when more care should be shifted into the community. As resources and staffing have been affected adversely, this has meant that waiting lists have grown to 7.6 million people causing delay in the treatment of serious conditions such as cancer, high blood pressure, respiratory illness and diabetes, meaning that early treatment opportunities have been missed.
Lord Darzi’s report says:
- A&E is in an “awful state” – with long waits likely to be causing an additional 14,000 more deaths a year, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine
- the state of the NHS is not entirely due to what has happened within the health service, but also because the health of the nation has deteriorated – for example bringing a surge in long-term mental health conditions
- rising levels of illness are risking economic prosperity, with 2.8 million people unable to work because of poor health
- the UK has higher cancer mortality rates than other countries
- although hospital staff numbers have increased since the pandemic, the number of appointments and procedures hasn’t because “patients no longer flow through hospitals as they should”
- the NHS has been starved of capital investment, meaning “crumbling buildings”, mental health patients in “Victoria-era cells infested with vermin” and “parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins”
Lord Darzi said: “Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation – not just in the health service, but in the state of the nation’s health.”
Nimish Patel, Head of Personal Injury and Clinical negligence, has said that this review follows a similar campaign from earlier this year from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) “Resuscitate Emergency Care” manifesto from April 2024 but nothing has changed.
RCEM’s manifesto highlights several critical areas that require urgent action to reduce the current strain on emergency care services in the UK. A recent BBC News report details how NHS waiting times are exceeding recommended limits.
Outlining the RCEM’s “Resuscitate Emergency Care” Manifesto
The RCEM manifesto calls for measures to:
- Reduce overcrowding and eliminate the need for “corridor care” for patients.
- Boost the emergency medicine workforce to ensure adequate staffing levels.
- Guarantee reasonable access to high-quality emergency care for all patients.
- Implement evidence-based strategies to tackle overcrowding.
- Introduce transparent performance metrics to monitor improvement.
Nimish believes these measures are essential to ensure safe and effective emergency care for everyone and has seen the difficulties within healthcare provision with his own mother-in-law over the past 10 months. “We have had to fight relentlessly for basic care within hospital , with the doctors feeling powerless to make decisions and chase referrals between departments. The situation was also complicated by the fact that the computer systems did not update other departments so I was often providing information to doctors that they were not aware about! “
Although the report focused on the NHS, Lord Darzi also warned of the “dire” state of social care, which he said was not “valued or resourced sufficiently”.
The growing gap between people’s needs and availability of publicly-funded social care in England was placing “an increasingly large burden on families and on the NHS”, he said.
Sir Keir Starmer, meanwhile, says the 2010s were the “lost decade” for the NHS, adding: “People have every right to be angry. It left the NHS unable to be there for patients today, and totally unprepared for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.
“The NHS is at a fork in the road and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands.
“Raise taxes on working people or reform to secure its future. We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it is reform or die.”
He acknowledged that waiting times in A&E are leading to avoidable deaths: “People’s loved ones who could have been saved. Doctors and nurses whose whole vocation is to save them – hampered from doing so. It’s devastating.”
