The UK government announced an investment of £1 billion along with the NHS to increase the number of beds and ambulances. Through this, the UK government and the NHS have planned to increase the number of beds in hospitals and the number of ambulances working under the NHS. As a part of these efforts, the NHS will be increasing the number of beds by 5% which is 5,000 new beds, and ambulance capacity by 10% which is 8,00 new ambulances. The agency has said that the detailed plan for the coming two years regarding this £1 billion investment will be released soon. However, the healthcare workers and other officials working under the NHS have shown a different view of the situation. Many healthcare workers believe that such efforts will do little in solving the actual problem of long waiting times in emergency rooms. Wes Streeting, the current Shadow Health Secretary said that by increasing the number of beds and ambulances, the standards of operations will fall and will continue to have longer waiting times for patients.
The UK has been struggling with the rising NHS crisis which is causing a significant amount of trouble for people in the UK. The NHS is responsible for the management of healthcare services across the UK as a network of public healthcare institutions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the NHS, similar to healthcare systems across the world, experienced serious strain due to restrictive working conditions and a continuous influx of patients. Because of this, the NHS also struggled with managing the number of healthcare professionals as many were leaving the profession because of being overworked. But with the start of 2022, as the world started recovering from the pandemic, the NHS and UK government were hit with another massive problem in the form of inflation and a slowing economy. Because of this, the tension between the government and healthcare workers under the NHS started sparkling more. This caused the country's healthcare system to slow down, resulting in longer waiting periods for serious problems such as emergency care. The strike by nursing staff in England and Wales who want better pay during inflation only worsened the situation.
On the other hand, the UK government seems to be more inclined towards adding more resources to the NHS rather than improving the number of healthcare workers under the NHS. The government believes that through the improvement of the resources it will successfully reduce the long waiting times within two years, as set by the UK PM Rishi Sunak. The UK government believes that by the end of March 2024, the NHS will be able to operate 76% of patients in Accidents and Emergency rooms within four hours of admission. During the current situation, the NHS can hardly address 70% of patients in A&E rooms within four hours, which is far less than the official target of 95%. The government is also planning to bring the waiting period for emergency services down to 30 minutes by the end of March 2024, with an official target of 15 minutes. PM Rishi Sunak has made it clear that if the UK government fails to achieve these numbers within the next two years, the public should hold him responsible for the government’s failure.
