03
Oct 2017
Chief hospital inspector says NHS ‘not fit for 21st Century’
Professor Ted Baker, the new chief inspector of hospitals in England, said that the NHS had not adapted sufficiently to deal with the population growth, saying “The model of care we have got is still the model we had in the 1960s and 70s.”
Professor Baker, who recently succeeded Sir Mike Richards in his role, said that the NHS had not adapted because of an historic lack of investment.
He said “One of the things I regret is that 15 or 20 years ago, when we could see the change in the population, the NHS did not change its model of care.
“It should have done it then – there was a lot more money coming in but we didn’t spend it all on the right things. We didn’t spend it on transformation of the model of care.”
Pensioner numbers have risen by a third in the last 30 years and he said that the NHS had particularly not been able to deal with this increase.
He also said that safety in accident and emergency wards needed to be improved, adding that too many hospitals had “wholly unsatisfactory arrangements”, for example allowing ambulances to queue up at hospital entrances or leaving patients in corridors.
He went on to say “Capacity is being squeezed all the time. That is a real concern going forward – because there comes a point at which the capacity isn’t there.”
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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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