Health chief warns of ‘difficult’ double strike
THE biggest strike in the history of the NHS will be a “difficult” day, a senior health service leader has warned, as a top emergency doctor described ongoing chaos in A&E departments.
Chris Hopson, chief strategy officer for NHS England, said that combined action on February 6 is a “step change” in the dispute.
Nurses and ambulance staff will stage strikes on the same day for the first time in the ongoing row over pay and conditions. It comes as the health service has faced criticism over its winter preparedness plans, with one senior medic saying that December was the “worst ever” in emergency departments.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that ongoing issues in the NHS “came to a head” in December, which he described as “awful”.
Dr Boyle told the House of Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee of his concern that, during ambulance strikes, some vulnerable people who need support may not seek help. Regarding the strikes, he said: “We worry that there will be people who don’t want to make a fuss, who are desperate not to go into hospital and not to bother people.”
Mr Hopson told MPs: “Next month will see a step change in the action arising from the dispute between the trade unions and the Government.
“So, we expect February 6 to be the biggest strike day in NHS history for five reasons: Firstly, we’re going to have nursing and ambulance unions planning coordinated industrial action across the country.
“Secondly, we know that the nursing stoppage will last for two days, rather than one.
“Thirdly, we know that the numbers of trusts affected will go from 44 in December to 55 in January to 73 in February; there is now a shorter gap between the strikes; and this strike starts on a Monday, which effectively makes it difficult to deploy the discharge of patients to improve flow, which is what we’ve been doing in previous strikes.
“So, just to make the point, we are now entering a new and more difficult phase in the dispute but, that said, we’re doing all we can to make sure that those who need care receive it, as we’ve done so far.
“I particularly wanted to stress that it is incredibly important that any patient who does have a lifethreatening emergency does call 999 and that, for any other urgent care, please use 111 online.”
When asked whether winter preparation plans had worked, Dr Boyle told MPs: “I think the answer actually is demonstrated by the outcome, and we’ve had such an awful December with such terrible outcomes. You can make a plan, but actually the measure of whether a plan succeeds is in the outcome, and the outcomes we’ve had over this December... we’ve said the plans have not worked in the way that we needed them to.”
“We’ve certainly had the worst ever December we’ve had – if you look at performance figures on every metric, what went on in December was terrible,” he added. “This is a complex, multi-faceted problem.
“I think we need to be realistic that just a little bit of money may not be just a magic fix. It’s not a magic wand. We’ve got serious structural problems.”