NHS pressures –What's Going to Happen?

Jamie & Will

The National Health Service (NHS) has been a staple of the UK culture and economy since its founding in 1948, but as time has progressed its functionality and efficiency has been slowly decreasing towards the point of collapse. This downward spiral has been most significantly worsened by the onset of COVID-19, producing an influx of severely ill patients, pushing the institution to the brink of its capacity. This extreme stretching of resources has only resulted in negative outcomes, with a waiting list of 6.8 million people in November 2022, ambulances arriving hours after the initial call, and overall public satisfaction down the drain.

But what are the fundamental issues causing these problems, and what will happen if they remain unfixed?

One of the root causes behind the pressures the NHS is facing is poor management in correspondence with the rapidly changing population dynamic since the 1950s. In this era, life expectancy was almost 20 years less than what it is today, and the national population was almost 20 million fewer than in 2022. This extensive increase in the number of people and the proportion of the elderly has outpaced NHS expansion, resulting in an overspreading of resources that will lead to excessive debt in the near future. In addition to this, the significant growth in the ageing population in the UK has resulted in a far higher percentage of people requiring treatments, meaning that more money than ever is required to fund a hospital’s expenses. This will have a detrimental effect on the economy, plunging the government into deeper debt, potentially reducing government spending and therefore lowering output. Although, if the right policies had been put in place in the past to aid an NHS expansion, the extent of pressure would be far reduced.

Another key issue is a lack of coordination with other interacting sectors of the economy. This is mainly accounted for by poor integration between hospitals and social care, meaning that misallocation of resources can occur. For example, when patients are taken out of social care to undergo surgical procedures (often remaining hospitalized for up to several weeks afterwards), their schemes are still funded by the government despite them not being required. This means that a large amount of money is being spent to negatively impact productive capacity to the low wages received by the workers worsened by the aftermath of COVID-19 and Brexit. During the cost of living crisis with inflation up to 10.6 percent, wage rises are not keeping up with inflation and hence real wages for doctors and nurses are falling. This means many resort to the private sector, vacating a number of job spaces that urgently need to be filled. when it could be reallocated for better use, making the opportunity cost extremely high. Therefore, developing the interaction of these two sectors of the economy would result in more efficient spending of this squandered investment, leading to sustained and improved economic growth.

A final issue is short staff. MPs have warned that the NHS is facing its worst staffing crisis in history. The large number of job vacancies is even reportedly posing a serious risk to patient health. The NHS is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and over 50,000 nurses, the worst workforce crisis in the 75-year history of the NHS. Whilst the workforce in the UK grows, the opposite is true for the NHS, and a reluctance to plug this staffing gap could ultimately threaten plans to tackle the Covid treatment backlog. The main reason for this crisis is evidently down

In conclusion, the results of poor management is a clear example of government failure. The misallocation of resources among interacting sectors and the staffing crisis, on top of the COVID-19, has resulted in the decrease in functionality and efficiency of the NHS, to the point where it is almost on the brink of collapse. The lack of government funding and refusal to increase real wages has resulted in patients’ lives being put at risk, further worsened by the unsuccessful strikes in attempts to increase real wages. The collapse of the NHS has come down to a period of government failure to support them in times of urgency such as the Covid crisis. If the government had put in the right policies in the past, then we may have seen an expansion in the NHS, rather than the worst staffing crisis seen for 75 years. A government scheme to recruit and retain more staff must be put in place, and quickly, or we may see the ultimate collapse of the NHS.