Winter crisis hits the NHS

2018 has kicked off with the NHS in the headlines once again.

We have been told that 83% of patients now arriving in Accident and Emergency are waiting longer than the 4 hours which is the Government recommended timescale for triaging patients. We are being directed to 111 or our local Pharmacists before we attend Accident and Emergency but with delays in seeing a General Practitioner figures say that 20% more patients attended than at the same time last year.

Routine surgery has been cancelled till the end of January 2018 for around 55,000 patients many of whom have been waiting months for a pain relieving operation. The Health Secretary has offered his apologies about this decision and accepts that this will mean patient being in pain for longer than necessary. However if there is no bed to put a patient in after surgery or no space in Intensive Care, if that is required, then is it preferable to wait rather than to have no after care?

The health profession are warning of a huge tragedy waiting to happen, with patients many of them elderly being at huge risk and often more likely to have a poor outcome because of the delay in receiving early treatment.

We are all aware that the NHS is under huge pressure, they do a magnificent job despite this but as new and more ground breaking treatments become available and we all live for longer costs soar further and there seems no way that the NHS can ever have sufficient funding to provide the services they would want to.

Clinical Negligence lawyers deal with the patients whose treatment falls below an acceptable standard and this then leads the patient to suffer unnecessary pain or an injury which would have been avoided had the treatment been acceptable. It can be as a result of delay, poorly carried out surgery, late referral or when something happens which is not a known risk or complication. Sometimes however, things do go wrong and it is nobody’s fault and no one is to blame. But where it is proved that these injuries could be avoided litigation is often considered.

For most of us reliance on the NHS is a daily occurrence and for the vast majority the experiences we have are good ones. Sadly when things go wrong it can have devastating and far reaching effects.