Amanda Pritchard has spoken about the tough challenges ahead for the NHS (Picture: Getty / PA)
The UK’s hospitals are facing ‘tougher challenges’ than the pandemic, according to the head of NHS England.
Amanda Pritchard – who became Chief Executive of the NHS in July last year – said she believes patients aren’t always getting the care they deserve, due to pressure on emergency services.
She said it is struggling to deal with long waits for A&E care, ambulances delayed when responding to 999 calls, lack of access to GP appointments and declining public satisfaction.
She also told a conference the pressures on hospitals, maternity care and services caring for vulnerable people with learning disabilities were of concern.
Speaking at the King’s Fund health thinktank’s annual conference in London, Pritchard admitted that the enormity of the NHS’s problems meant patients did not always get the best care.
Patients are facing increasingly long NHS waiting times (Picture: AFP)
Last year nurses went on strike over pay (Picture: Getty)
Lack of acces to GP appointments for patients is another concern for the CEO of the NHS (Picture: PA)
MORE : NHS setting up ‘war rooms’ as it prepares for ‘toughest winter on record’
MORE : ‘Unaccountable and corrupt’: Family’s despair after battle over NHS ‘overdose’ death
She said: ‘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.
‘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 … I think it is harder now. Why? Because, partly, we no longer have a single unifying mission.’
Ms Pritchard is the first female chief executive in NHS history and took over from Lord Stevens last year.
Her appointment came in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, where the UK faced one of it’s biggest nursing crisis in history.
She added: ‘We are dealing with paradoxes, we’re dealing with complexity and we are dealing with uncertainty,
“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 your patients getting the standard of care they deserve?
‘We know we can’t always answer yes to that question.’
MORE : A pay rise for nurses ‘could save NHS money’ by retaining staff
MORE : Dozens of babies died or suffered brain damage unnecessarily at NHS trust
In a letter to staff, Ms Pritchard, along with other NHS execs said hospitals in England had laid out ‘winter resilience plans’ and were planning on setting up ‘war rooms’ to deal with the crisis.
This includes new 24/7 system control centres which are expected to be created in every local area.
These centres will be expected to manage demand and capacity across the entire country by constantly tracking beds and attendances.
Last month the annual report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the NHS is gridlocked with patients at risk because they cannot access the support they need.
More: News
It warned the problem was creating long waits for ambulances and in A&E.
A major factor was also that most patients cannot leave hospital when they are ready, it said, because of a lack of support in the community.
The system could no longer operate effectively, the CQC said.
Chief executive Ian Trenholm said in the report: ‘People are stuck – stuck in hospital because there isn’t the social care support in place for them to leave, stuck in emergency departments waiting for a hospital bed to get the treatment they need and stuck waiting for ambulances that don’t arrive because those same ambulances are stuck outside hospitals waiting to transfer patients.’
Alongside delays in accident-and-emergency departments and with 999 services, 500,000 people are waiting for council-funded care – an increase from just under 300,000 in a year.
The CQC report blamed staffing shortages, with one-in-10 posts in both the NHS and social-care sector vacant.
The regulator was also heavily critical of maternity care, pointing out two out of five services were rated not good enough.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Amanda Pritchard told the conference the pressures on hospitals, maternity care and services caring for vulnerable people with learning disabilities were of concern.
