14/02/2015 Protect and improve our Health Service
The coalition government’s health service reorganisation which cost £3billion, yet nobody wanted or voted for, has led to ambulances queuing at Casuality units and less patients being seen at casualty within four hours.
Local Authority Social Care budgets have been cut to the bone leading to a massive reduction in the support available to vulnerable older people:
- The number of Meals on Wheels delivered has gone down by 63% under this C Coalition Government
- The number of District Nurses has been reduced in recent years from 12,000 to 5,500
- Caring in the home has been largely privatised. Staff are often on zero hours contracts and are allowed 15 minutes for each visit
Labours plans will:
- Reduce the time patients wait at casualty
- Cut the number of ambulances queuing
- Reduce the number of blocked beds
- Join up the NHS and Social Care to free up beds
- Repeal the Coalition Government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012, designed to privatise the NHS
The Coalition Government have made political decisions which have inevitably caused the chaos we now see. The Conservatives are privatising more and more of the NHS and UKIP's aim is to privatise all of it. But privatisation boosts company profits instead of providing more health care and is more costly than the NHS providing treatment in-house.
- Professionals deplore the decision to replace the NHS Direct telephone service with the inefficient 111 Service
- The leader of the British Medical Association has said that Government has caused the crisis by demanding cost cutting in a medical service that was already acknowledged to be the most cost effective in the world
- Hundreds of beds in hospital are blocked because older people cannot be safely sent home. These patients take up nursing care whilst they remain in hospital
- *At the Princes Royal Hospital statistics for patients being seen in four hours and ambulances waiting at casualty are worse than the national average - but the present government policies mean that virtually all hospitals are failing to meet their targets
- The UK spends less on health care per person than any other country in the developed world yet our aging population means more money needs to be spent
- Under Labour, 3% of the NHS budget was spent on administration, but since the contract-led Conservative reorganisation this has grown to 11%
Councillor David Andrews, leader of the Labour Group on Burgess Hill Town Council said, "Burgess Hill Labour Party fully supports the nurses, midwives and anciliary staff in their request for a modest increase in wages. Their pay has been severely restrained for the last five years and it is time to recognise their dedication in keeping the service running to the standard that it is."
*Source: Data for Brighton and Sussex University NHS Trust