NHS: Accident and Emergency Units
(10 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness McDonagh
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for the future of NHS accident and emergency units.
Baroness McDonagh (Lab)
It might help the House if I explain why I have asked for this debate. I live near St Helier and St George’s Hospitals. The A&E at St Helier Hospital, which had 80,000 visits last year, may be closed. It is a regular district hospital. St George’s is not a regular hospital, but a regional and national trauma centre, specialising in strokes and coronary care, with very high unit costs. If St Helier were to shut, we all know locally that the people of that area would go to the A&E in St George’s—costing more, blocking beds and destabilising the hospital. That is because hospitals make money on their elective procedures and tend to lose money on emergency care. If you change that ratio, you soon put the hospital into the red. The London Borough of Merton commissioned some independent research and found the same thing. The researchers said, “We questioned CCG board members quite closely regarding their understanding of the baseline financial activity and quality position in Merton. We did not find a good understanding of the current resource position, nor how these resources were being used, and how such use would be compared to other parts of London and England as a whole”. I do not blame them for that, as they probably cannot get hold of the information in the rest of London or England. They go on to say, “Without a thorough assessment of these issues, there is a high risk of taking the wrong or even counterproductive action. For example, if financial problems are caused by high unit costs at St George’s, it makes no sense to close St Helier”.
I took my local knowledge, together with my understanding of what is happening to the NHS nationally, particularly around A&E, and put two Questions down. One Question asked how many A&E departments had been closed by the Government since they came into office in 2010. The answer came back, “We don’t know”. I asked how many A&E closures were currently under consultation. The answer came back, “We don’t know”.
Perhaps I could explain tonight to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and to the Government, why it is important that they know how many A&Es they have, where those units are and how many are closing. The clue is in the title: National Health Service. The Government are responsible for the oversight, costs, management and planning of the health service. To do that, you need to know where your A&Es are. When A&Es close, maternity units normally follow. The Government are responsible for seeing that there are enough beds for mums to have their babies. They also tell us, because they have the figures, that the population is due to increase to 70 million—so shutting maternity units is probably not a good idea. You also need to know where the A&Es are because, when you shut an A&E, other clinical services close with them. If you shut St Helier A&E, you will also shut the regional renal unit. According to the evidence, you also reduce ITU beds and medical beds; hospitals cannot then meet their elective targets.
The Government also need to know, because—I do not know if this is shocking—they are responsible for disaster and emergency recovery planning, and generally it is a good idea to know where the A&Es are. They are also responsible for sending out the latest advice and, again, you cannot do that if you do not know where the A&Es are. Lastly, the closures of the four A&Es that have already happened have led to unintended consequences, and you need that information for forward public policy-making. We are getting worse results, it is costing more and the care is worse. All in all, it is a lose-lose situation. Closures are not working, largely because they have been built on six terrible government reforms, which are resulting in systemic failure in the NHS. No money announced today or two-tier A&Es will make a difference to that.
The first of the reforms that have led to the problems that we now face is the Government collapsing all targets. Then there is the terrible reform of giving GPs the NHS budget, which took from front-line services, and cost the Government, £3 billion. The Government have also overseen the closure of one-quarter of all walk-in centres, and Monitor says the future for the rest is dicey. They have also overseen cuts in the adult social care bill of £1.8 billion and cuts to aids and adaptations, so that we are seeing record numbers of elderly people go into hospitals through A&Es, who cannot then get out because the aids and adaptations have not been made. The fifth and sixth reforms were shutting NHS Direct and introducing the terrible 111 service. Doctors and nurses are leaving in their droves, and the Government have spent an extra £120 million on emergency medical locums compared to before. All these reforms have led to a threefold increase in attendance at A&Es, and now more than one in four people who go to A&Es are being admitted. If the ministerial health team were doctors, they would be struck off.
When I look into this, I cannot decide whether it is incompetence or ideology that is driving these changes. I fear that it is a dangerous cocktail of both. For me, it is perfectly legitimate in a democracy to be against a national health service, but you need to be honest about that, and it is important to have a debate. I will start that debate by answering my own questions. Four A&Es have been closed since 2010 and a further 15 face closure, which means one-third of all A&Es in the M25 area will close. Last week, NHS England announced that a further 60 A&Es out of 197 will close. Tomorrow, the A&E is closing at Trafford General Hospital, where Aneurin Bevan announced the birth of the NHS.
What am I asking the Minister for Health? I am asking him to call a moratorium on all A&E closures, to listen to the public, to commission independent research on what is happening and, above all, to find out where these A&Es are and to visit them.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, in my three minutes, I will make some brief comments that will lead up to some questions for the Minister. In my view, the pressures on A&E departments are but one component of wider pressures in the NHS. There is a disconnect between A&E and other departments in hospitals, such as diagnostic and in-patient services, which, in contrast to A&E, are both geared to a five-day, nine-to-five working schedule. Added to that of course is the fragmented nature of patient services in the community, which leads to bedblocking and further pressures on A&E. We will have to address the problems of A&E, and the Keogh report goes some way to doing that, but the problems in A&E will not be solved by focusing on just one aspect of the service. The whole system needs to be co-ordinated and to work seamlessly.
Figures show that the main pressures on A&E come from people with long-term conditions. This in turn leads to pressures on in-patient services. This is due in part to poor access to primary and community care. What is needed, as has been discussed on many occasions, is better management of patients with long-term conditions so that they do not end up needing emergency care.
There are other issues. The issue of workforce problems in A&E further compounds the problem. I understand that there is a serious problem with recruitment of trainees, particularly specialist trainees, in A&E. There are also, of course, the vagaries of the tariff, which is set more in favour of elective work than emergency work. I note that the Keogh report tries to address that, or at least intends to explore it. I know that recently the Government have allowed more funds to help with A&E pressures but I am not sure what these funds are to be used for. I hope that the Minister will comment on that. It would be helpful if he could comment on whether the Government have a long-term strategy to cope with the increasing number of patients with long-term conditions, and on what plans the Government have for Health Education England to address the issue of workforce planning, which would help with A&E.
Lord Selsdon (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for introducing this debate. I declare an interest as a director of the construction company that built St George’s. We had quite a lot of trouble with it.
I will use as my text the wonderful brief produced by the Library. I declare an interest as having been on the Information Committee. I want to draw attention to the need to separate the main A&E centres from the patient. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that we should look to people who have a long-term condition, and generally are aware that they have a long-term condition. We should also look at the intermediate situation of what can be done at the place of an incident.
I have used 111 three times. When I first used it, I was quite surprised that I was dealing with foreign doctors who had relatively little knowledge but terribly pleased with the enthusiasm of these people who had only been in the business for a short period of time. There was a tendency to refer someone to A&E immediately rather than to look at what care might be given closer to the place of the incident or to a person’s home. In my day we looked to the district nurse, who seems to have disappeared from real life, or the retired doctor whom we knew down the road or the pharmacist. Our pharmacists in the United Kingdom are among the best in the world. They are extremely well trained and a very good point of contact.
When calling 111, you usually receive an answer to a telephone call quite quickly, and you receive a bit of guidance and advice, but the irrevocable next step is to be taken to A&E. One or perhaps two ambulances may then arrive.
I have often worked abroad and have been privileged to benefit from A&Es in other places. I once suffered from an extremely bad upset stomach in Cairo, which ended in rebuilding the sewers, where the A&E man arrived on a moped with only one working cylinder and a flat tyre and cured me within a couple of hours. He was the doctor to the Egyptian swimming team. Egyptian doctors are really quite good and he explained to me that every one of them was trained to deal with situations on the spot.
When I was in Italy, not so long ago, there was no doctor available when someone was ill so a hotel rang the transport department. The transport department has doctors on motorbikes on call for car accidents. They turned up and sorted everything out. This seems to happen in many places. I live in France part of the time, and there we do not call the health service when there is a problem, we call the fire brigade. They like exercises and they send a small fire engine—if the patient is a woman, there will be a woman with them—and they get patients to hospitals more quickly than ambulances.
There must be further thought on this. I ask your Lordships to read the Library’s report, as that is what I would have said if I were competent to do so.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady McDonagh for initiating this, albeit brief, debate. I plan to use my three minutes to focus on one point. Before I do so, I will say that it is hard to look aside from the mounting problems of A&E departments, spoken to powerfully by my noble friend and evidenced by the number of patients waiting longer than four hours, the numbers waiting on trolleys, the increase of bed days lost because of delayed discharges and staffing problems. A&E departments undoubtedly are struggling to cope. All of this is exacerbated, as identified by the Health Select Committee, by the inadequacy of information about the nature of the demand placed on the service.
There has been hardly any focus in the wider debate on accident prevention in the first place. Prevention would be investing to save: to save on pain and suffering, even death; to prevent days lost at school or work; and to save costs to the NHS, A&E and the welfare system. The current chaos compels us to be radical. At least one-third of the nation’s A&E attendances are the result of accidental injuries. There are millions of injuries every year that are 100% preventable, according to the Office for National Statistics. These injuries are rising as a significant proportion of the overall pressure on A&E because we have stopped investing in the tried and tested antidote. We should not be negligent about the safety of our citizens, our duty to our health professionals and the very future of our National Health Service.
The country’s longest-standing safety charity, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, of which I am delighted to say that I am now president and in respect of which I declare my interest, has already shown what can be done. In Liverpool, for example, it ran a home safety scheme, working with disadvantaged families with children under five. Equipment such as stair gates, fireguards and blind-cord shorteners were fitted in the homes of those most at risk. Parents were given practical advice to help them keep their children safe. This is not rocket science. The result was that A&E admissions for zero to five year-olds plummeted by about 50% over two years—against the trend, as home accidents have been rising steadily over recent decades.
There is no doubt that increased funding for accident prevention initiatives and a task force to co-ordinate national action could lead to a major reduction in the number of deaths and injuries and the call on A&E departments. The answer is not just more resources or different approaches to treatment, but an alternative that is staring us full in the face. Accidents are the main cause of preventable early death for most of our lives, costing the state £20 billion to £30 billion each year. Given all this, is it not time that we rediscovered that prevention is always better than cure?
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, the first choice of most people who think that they need urgent medical attention is to go to their local hospital’s accident and emergency department. I understand that, as A&E departments are trusted by the public as a place of expertise and knowledge. However, as we know, our hospitals and A&E departments are under significant pressure to treat all those who come through their doors. On top of this, the Royal College of Surgeons states that A&E departments are understaffed by around 10% and that in some trusts, such as Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, the figure is as much as 43%. The understaffing of A&E departments is a serious issue.
Following the disgraceful events at Mid-Staffordshire hospitals, the Government have given their total commitment to putting patient care first and ensuring that patient safety should always be paramount. However, it is clear that running A&E departments that are under-resourced and poorly staffed poses a high risk to patient care and patient safety. This issue needs urgent attention by the Government and the NHS health board and I look forward to the Minister’s response on the plans that the Government have to rectify this and the timescales involved.
I too have read Sir Bruce Keogh’s review of urgent and emergency care services in England and I agree with the report’s proposals that there must be a “fundamental shift” in the provision of urgent care. I agree with much of the report, which is reasonable. But what we need now is strong leadership to deliver.
I have also read the July 2013 survey findings from the NHS Confederation, which found that its members thought three main solutions could lead to fewer pressures on A&E departments. The first was more money for primary and community care. To this, I would add more extended primary care out-of-hours services provided by GPs. These could be sited in hospitals or perhaps close to A&E departments. This would enable GPs to work in much greater collaboration with hospital A&E staff and could provide the patient with much needed seamless care.
Secondly, winter pressure money for hospitals should be allocated sooner. I would further argue that this money should be part of hospitals’ general allocation so that they can plan service delivery for all their services in a more effective, planned and co-ordinated way. Thirdly, there should be a public-facing campaign about all the alternatives to emergency departments, but these alternatives must provide a good quality of care and service if they are to have the trust of the public.
The Government are moving in the right direction by allocating specific funds, but it is not just about turning the tanker, it is about making our hospitals and GP services fit for the 21st century.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, there is confusion at the moment about where people go when they need treatment at weekends and at night. There is considerable difference between urban and rural health. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, for initiating this very topical debate.
Rural health has changed so much from the days of the family doctor, when he or she knew their patients. Now the doctor is dependent on the computer. My surgery in rural North Yorkshire opens at 9 am, is closed each day from 12.30 pm to 2 pm, has a historical half-day on a Thursday, shuts each day at 6 pm and is shut over the weekend. The out-of-hours service at Ripon is 10 miles away and does not have anyone to operate the X-ray so it has to be the hospitals, which are 26 and 16 miles away. There are no alternatives to the A&E departments. This is not good for elderly, frail people who need attention.
In rural areas there are serious farming injuries and all the usual conditions, but also such conditions as leptospirosis—Weil’s disease—which can be a killer. I agree that serious conditions should go to the correct hospital, however far away, and I must say that the air ambulance is invaluable and supported by the rural communities. Will having two types of emergency department—one an emergency centre and the other a major emergency centre—not cause more confusion? To which centre should a parent take a child with suspected meningitis B, which can kill within 24 hours?
More integrated care in the community is essential. With all the long-term rare conditions and conditions such as diabetes and liver disease, a specialist nurse is vital and can be a lifeline. One of the problems in the community is not being able to have a drip for antibiotics, and not being able to get antibiotics without a doctor means that ill people have to go to hospital. I am sure that if everyone learnt first aid and it was taught in schools, colleges, prisons and the community, lives would be saved.
Up-to-date information about what is available and where to go for treatment in rural areas would be helpful and would reduce confusion. I end by asking the Minister: with the shortage of emergency doctors working in A&E departments, what is being done to recruit and retain them? They need support so they do not get overburdened and disillusioned. They are essential.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady McDonagh on having initiated a debate that enables us to draw attention to the serious crisis in A&E, which is evidenced by people waiting long hours on trolleys or in ambulances, the consequence of social care cuts, the fact that walk-in centres are being reduced and that NHS Direct has been closed down, all of which aggravate the problem.
I will focus my remarks on north-west London, which has been hit harder than most parts of the country. It is going to lose four of its nine A&E services and two of its major hospitals; for example, at Charing Cross Hospital 500 acute beds are going to disappear and will be replaced by up to 50 rehab beds. It means that the service at Charing Cross will be manned by GPs. There will not be a proper A&E service. There will not be a blue-light service at Charing Cross Hospital and people will have to travel much further. We are losing an excellent hospital for the sake of these cuts.
Above all, it means that the intensive care unit at Charing Cross will be closed; the stroke clinic, which I understand is probably the best in the UK, will go; and there will be no emergency surgery. It means that all the current beds and most of the site will go, mostly likely to be sold for development, and we shall lose an excellent hospital. It means that Charing Cross will become a second-tier site and there will be a knock-on effect at Hammersmith Hospital, which is also going to be hit very hard.
Services in north-west London will be decimated and patients will have to travel much further to go to A&E. In the heavy traffic in London, that is not a small thing. It is not a matter of an extra two or three minutes; it could be an extra long period before an emergency can be dealt with. What we will have locally is some very limited services indeed and we shall lose some of the skills and expertise that we have had.
At Charing Cross there will be GP cover; they will be able to treat simple fractures and will have some beds on site that can admit patients, mainly the frail elderly, for short periods of rehab or assessment. But there will be no emergency service at Charing Cross and nearby Hammersmith will have only an urgent care centre, which will not guarantee to walk-in patients that they will be seen by a GP, and there will certainly be no blue-light service.
We are losing a lot of our services in north-west London and I fear that the standards of the National Health Service will deteriorate. It is not necessary to do this and I very much regret that it is happening.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, for having secured this important debate. I declare my interest as professor of surgery at University College London and chairman-elect of UCLPartners Academic Health Science Partnership.
No consideration of the future plans for accident and emergency departments can take place without recognising the important factors that are driving demand in A&E. The most important of these is the growing number of frail elderly patients with multiple comorbidities, as my noble friend Lord Patel has already mentioned. The population aged over 85 has grown at more than three and a half times the rate of the rest of the population in the past 10 years. It is striking that 9% of those aged over 75 have experienced an emergency admission through accident and emergency in the past year. This demonstrates that there is considerable demand and that this considerable demand will grow.
We know that the way that we plan and deliver services for those who are frail, elderly and have multiple comorbidities is not providing the kind of service, the degree of confidence and the relief of anxiety that these patients require. We also recognise that those who are cared for in nursing homes and care homes, who find themselves in an acute situation, will be attended to by excellent paramedics and the ambulance service, but the default position will always be to take these individuals to hospital and very frequently for these individuals to be admitted and then to spend long periods of time in hospital. This is wrong.
With regard to the plans of NHS England, can the Minister tell us what advice is now being provided to local commissioning groups in terms of the commissioning of more holistic and integrated services that recognise the needs of the frail elderly in the community and can better understand how those needs are met, and how the services are delivered in an integrated fashion with local hospitals, while avoiding admission through accident and emergency?
What discussion has taken place about addressing the important problems of workforce development, to help us ensure that we have a medical and paramedical workforce developed for the needs of these large numbers of frail elderly patients with multiple comorbidities? What position has Health Education England taken, and how is this central advice being delivered to local education and training boards to ensure that an appropriate workforce is delivered, able to deliver multidisciplinary care to reduce the demand on accident and emergency services and manage patients rather better in the community?
Finally, may I ask the Minister how much progress has been made on the development of locally sensitive information technology projects that allow a connection between information held on frail elderly patients with multiple comorbidities in different care environments, be it in social care, in primary clinical care in the community or in hospital care? Such information could be shared effectively to reduce the burden on accident and emergency departments.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady McDonagh for securing this debate on the future of NHS accident and emergency units. At the start I declare an interest: I chair, on an entirely voluntary basis, a small committee at Lewisham hospital. It is impossible in just three minutes to get across the scale of the problems and the anxiety and concern of local communities about the A&E crisis that is unfolding before us as the winter sets in.
What did the Government do as soon as they came into office? They had a top-down reorganisation of the NHS, after pledging not to do that, which only made matters worse. What is clear is that this is the Government’s problem. It has happened on their watch, with poor implementation of their already flawed policies, and the cuts they have made to the NHS, to social services and other budgets. There has also been the running down of NHS Direct and the ramshackle way in which the NHS 111 service has been introduced.
I hope the Minister will be able to tell the House how the Department of Health and the NHS are going to respond to the challenges they face, and how they propose to do that with thousands and thousands fewer staff than we had only a few years ago. I fear that things could be even worse than last winter, and we will be back with rising numbers of patients waiting on trolleys at A&E.
We have already had an A&E summer crisis, with more than 1 million people waiting more than four hours to be seen, all on the Minister’s watch. The problem is all of this Government’s own making, and they are not going to get away with trying to wriggle out of it. The Minister and the rest of his team would have us believe that it is everyone else’s problem—it is the doctors’ fault, and the fault of the nurses, the GPs, the porters, the radiographers, the support staff, the patients, or even the weather. It is too cold, or it is too warm, or it is the wrong time of the year. But it is this Government’s problem; it is down to mismanagement by this Conservative and Lib Dem coalition.
If the Minister is going to tell us the problem is caused by too many people going to A&E when they should go somewhere else, can he tell the House why the Government cut Labour’s extended opening hours for doctors’ surgeries and why they are closing NHS walk-in centres up and down the country? Can he confirm how many walk-in centres have closed since the Government came into office? Why did they close NHS Direct, and why did they introduce NHS 111?
My noble friend Lady McDonagh has got it right. We have a dangerous mix of incompetence and ideology. They want to get rid of the NHS, but they realise how unpopular that would be, so instead they pare down to the bone, to the minimum that they can get away with.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I should declare, in this important debate, that my daughter is an A&E consultant in London. The current crisis is multi-factorial, at the one place in the system that is open 24 hours—open all hours, in fact. As the National Audit Office report, Emergency Admissions to Hospital, says:
“A&E departments are facing increasing pressure and there is evidence that at times of increased pressure there is a greater tendency to admit patients. Urgent access to primary care is variable and has been linked to higher A&E attendances … the severity of patients in major A&E departments is worsening, with higher proportions of patients arriving via ambulance and a sharp increase in the percentage of patients attending A&E … who are then admitted".
The College of Emergency Medicine also highlights insufficient workforce capacity, with 383 of 699 specialist registrar posts in emergency medicine unfilled. That equates to a capacity of 1 million patient contacts a year. There is also an exit block from A&E departments through delayed hospital discharges, estimated at 830,000 last year, which reduce bed capacity. This is compounded by inadequate ongoing community social support for those sent home. The £500 million in extra funding over two years has been targeted on those with the worst A&E performance last winter, and an extra £150 million was announced. Can the Minister confirm that this money will go directly to provide A&E services and its distribution will not inadvertently penalise departments that radically changed practices in their struggle to perform?
The staffing crisis jeopardises care. Consultant numbers need to rise from the current average of seven to a minimum of 10 per A&E to allow consultant cover 365 days a year from 8 am to midnight, with higher numbers of consultants in larger trauma centres. Today’s registrars are tomorrow's consultants, and this has to be a consultant-led service, because rapid diagnosis is absolutely essential for the complex trauma and urgent cases that are in the high-risk categories. These are not simple cases coming through the door; they present completely unselected problems.
The relentless pressure of work has driven more than 50 A&E consultants to emigrate this year—a tenfold rise. The College of Emergency Medicine survey of more than 1,000 consultants found that overall, 62% report that their current job plans are unsustainable, while 94% of respondents regularly work in excess of their planned activities.
The Keogh review is a longer-term attempt to solve the crisis. But it is silent on the workforce issues. Can the Minister assure me that these are being urgently considered? What is planned to develop primary care and better co-ordinated community care for a seven-day service? How quickly will the needed IT support be introduced, and how will the system of two-tier A&Es be implemented—over what timescale—to ensure that geographically remote regions are serviced without greatly increasing journey times to hospital and so risking higher patient mortality? This is not a simple problem.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I first declare an interest as chair of a foundation trust, president of GS1 and consultant and trainer with Cumberlege Connections.
I too am grateful to my noble friend for raising such an important issue. The case she put for her local hospital, St Helier, was put with great force. The issues she raises are symptomatic of a whole range of issues around emergency care. They are well known, and they are symptomatic of a near collapse of the system in many parts of the country. My noble friends have already referred to the inexplicable closure of walk-in centres, and I ask the Minister why NHS England has pressurised clinical commissioning groups to close those centres. That has exacerbated poor access in primary care, and people are often left with no choice but to turn to A&E, with hospitals becoming very full as a result.
As my noble friend Lord Dubs said, the discharge of patients is becoming ever harder because the severe cutbacks in social services have impacted on councils’ ability to provide community support. The result of this cumulative failure is that more and more old people are left without the care and support needed to let them stay at home.
I want to reinforce a question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar. What are clinical commissioning groups doing about this? They are, as it were, the treasure of the Government—the people who are supposed to be able to sort the situation out. I see no sign whatever of their getting to grips with the issues. I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, in asking; why on earth were they given the money to spend in relation to A&E? Why not give it to the hospitals to spend where it would have an impact on the system?
At a time when the NHS should be focusing all its energies on getting the system to work properly, as my noble friend Lord Kennedy says, the Government have forced it to spend the past three years implementing a costly and completely unnecessary structural change. Remarkably, during that time, rather than increasing staff we have seen a loss of more than 6,600 nurses.
There is a pressing need to integrate health and social care, provide whole person care and prevent avoidable admissions to hospital. That would also embrace the comments of my noble friend Lord McKenzie about accident prevention. Urgent emergency care has a similar need of change. Of course, the recent review by Sir Bruce Keogh argues for a “fundamental shift” in the provision of urgent care and for introducing two types of hospital emergency department with current working titles of emergency centres and major emergency centres. I am not opposed to reform of emergency care, but it is essential, before there is a stampede of closures of current A&E departments, that decisions are based on robust clinical evidence. Any signs of closure for financial reasons must be resisted. I agree with my noble friends Lord Dubs and Lady McDonagh about the domino effect of A&E closures on the services in those hospitals.
I finish by reminding the Minister that what happened in the case of Lewisham hospital was quite disgraceful. A good hospital suddenly found itself having its A&E proposed for closure to shore up problems in neighbouring hospitals. It is shameful that the Government forced through an amendment in the Care Bill to make this kind of thing much easier to force through in future. The Government’s disastrous reforms and failure to manage the system are putting the NHS under ever more pressure. It is time that they got a grip.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, for raising this important issue, in which I know that she has a significant interest. I thank other noble Lords who have contributed to this very interesting debate.
I would like to respond initially by explaining the Government’s policy with regard to service change in general, before moving on to the provision of care in A&E specifically. I find it difficult to say much about the noble Baroness’s speech beyond observing that there is such a gulf separating us in our respective understanding of the facts and what is actually happening in the NHS that I shall have to write to her—and I shall do so.
The Government are absolutely clear that the design of front-line health services, including accident and emergency units, is a matter for the local NHS. It is the policy of this Government that services should be tailored to meet the needs of the local population. Reconfiguration is about modernising the delivery of care and facilities to improve patient outcomes, develop services closer to home and, most importantly, to save lives. Therefore, all service changes should be led by clinicians, and be in the best interests of patients, not driven from the top down. That is why we are putting patients, carers and local communities at the heart of the NHS, shifting decision-making as close as possible to individual patients, by devolving power to professionals and providers, and liberating them from top-down control.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, if that is so, why has NHS England put so much pressure on clinical commissioning groups to close walk-in centres? It is simply not happening that clinicians are deciding. The fact is that NHS England is carrying on a micro- management of what is happening; it is simply not playing out in the way that the noble Earl describes.
Baroness McDonagh
I have another example. If what the Minister said were true, how did the Secretary of State for Health try to shut Lewisham general when all the clinicians called for it not to be shut?
Earl Howe
I shall say more on Lewisham in a moment. This is a time-limited debate, and I hope that I may be allowed to conclude my speech.
The principles that I have just enunciated are further enshrined in the four reconfiguration tests first set down to the NHS in 2010, which all local reconfiguration plans should demonstrate. These are support from GP commissioners, strengthened public and patient engagements, clarity on the clinical evidence base, and support for patient choice.
Our reforms allow strategic decisions to be taken at the appropriate level. We are enabling clinical commissioners to make the changes that will deliver real improvements in health outcomes. That is the purpose of reconfiguration. Furthermore, local commissioners proposing significant service change should engage with NHS England throughout the process to ensure that any changes are well managed strategically and, crucially, that they will meet the four tests that I have just referred to.
Given the scale of change across the health system, it is important that local NHS organisations are now supported when redesigning their health services. We are working with our national partners, NHS England, the Trust Development Authority and Monitor, on the continuing design of the interfaces, roles and responsibilities of organisations in the new system. For example, stroke care in London, which has been centralised into eight hyper-acute stroke units, now provides 24 hours a day, seven days a week acute stroke care to patients regardless of where they live. Stroke mortality is now 20% lower in London than in the rest of the UK, and survivors, with lower levels of long-term disability, are experiencing a better quality of life. That is why we must allow the local NHS to continually challenge the status quo and look for the best way of serving its patients.
I turn specifically to accident and emergency departments and points raised by a number of noble Lords. The NHS is seeing more than 1 million additional patients in A&E compared to three years ago and, despite this additional workload, it is generally coping well. I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that we are meeting our four-hour A&E standard and have done since the end of April. The latest figures show that around 96% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival. There are now 500 more A&E doctors in the NHS than there were under the previous Government. Trusts expect to hire 4,000 more nurses, due to the Francis effect, as a result of the public inquiry that the party opposite decided not to pursue.
I have heard many noble Lords describe the current situation as a crisis. I do not share that perception. The NHS is performing well under pressure. Dealing with an extra 1 million patients in A&E does, however, mean that we must look at the underlying causes. Providing urgent and emergency care for people is not just about A&E. It is about how the NHS works as a whole and how it works with other areas such as social care, and how it faces up to the challenge of an ageing population of more people with long-term conditions. Therefore, the Government are taking action to respond to the immediate winter pressures and, looking longer term, we will tackle the unsustainable increasing demand on the system.
NHS England, Monitor and the Trust Development Authority, working with ADASS, have been working together on the A&E improvement and winter planning since May. Staff across the service have worked extremely hard to prepare this year and are committed to making sure that their plans are robust and that patients will receive the services they should expect and deserve. This process was started earlier and is more comprehensive than in previous years. We are determined to do everything we can for the NHS to continue providing high-quality care to patients throughout the winter, which is why we are backing the system with additional funds in the short term to help local areas prepare for and manage additional pressure during the winter.
We have allocated £250 million of funding to NHS England to help cope with winter pressures, with another £250 million for 2014-15. There will also be an extra £150 million from within the NHS England existing budget this year to ensure that everywhere receives a fair share of the funding.
It is, however, clear that the current situation is unsustainable in the long term. That is why we asked Sir Bruce Keogh to lead a review of urgent and emergency care with the first phase published on 13 November, which was also roundly welcomed by the system, including, as noble Lords will be aware, by the NHS Confederation and the Royal College of Surgeons. There will be a further update in spring 2014.
The review is aimed at delivering system-wide change, not just in A&E but across all health and care services in England by concentrating specialist expertise where appropriate to ensure that patients with the most serious illnesses and injuries get the best possible care and ensuring that other services, such as primary and community care, are more responsive and delivered locally. This will mean that people will understand how to access the most appropriate treatment in the right place as close to home as possible.
The noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and others referred to NHS 111. The introduction of the NHS 111 service is part of the wider revisions to the urgent care system to deliver a 24/7 urgent care service that ensures people receive the best care from the best person in the right place at the right time. This is not only government policy; it was a policy fully signed up to by the previous Government and initiated by them. Although NHS 111 has had a difficult start, we have backed the service with a £15 million fund to support it over the winter. NHS 111 now deals with more than half a million calls a month, and 97% of them are answered in under a minute. The first phase of the urgent and emergency care review sets out a significant expansion and enhancement of the NHS 111 service so that patients know to use the 111 number first time, every time, for the right advice or treatment.
NHS Direct, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will continue to provide 111 services to patients until alternative arrangements can be made by commissioners. The transfer of NHS Direct’s 111 services is progressing well.
Together with NHS England, we are putting together a strategy focusing on the people who are the heaviest users of the NHS, vulnerable older people and those with multiple long-term conditions. Here I am addressing particularly the points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Kakkar, and my noble friend Lord Selsdon. The vulnerable older people’s plan will focus on improving out-of-hospital care services centred on the role of general practice in leading proactive, person-centred care within a broader team and is due to be published later this year. A key element of the plan is the provision of joined-up care for vulnerable older people, spanning GPs, social services, and A&E departments themselves, which is overseen by an accountable GP. The aim of proactive care management is to help keep people healthy and independent longer.
A number of noble Lords referred to the workforce challenge. Health Education England is working with stakeholders on a number of innovations to help alleviate the workforce problems in emergency medicine. Through the Emergency Medicine Workforce Implementation Group, Health Education England will work to develop alternative training routes for emergency medicine and a range of mid-level non-doctor clinician posts. They will work with NHS England on potential workforce and training requirements.
I would like to address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about Lewisham. Lewisham’s A&E is not closing. The TSA proposals were a response, as he is well aware, to a very difficult, long-standing challenge facing south London. The new Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust must now work with its commissioners and community to deliver a clinically and financially sustainable future. As regards north- west London, which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to, the Secretary of State has endorsed the recommendations of the Independent Review Panel, and it is now for CCGs in north-west London, working with NHS England, to take this forward. The decisions here were supported by all the commissioners in the area and all the medical directors in the trusts and all but one of the relevant local authorities.
My noble friend Lady Manzoor spoke about public awareness and engagement. I agreed with a lot of what she said. Through our reforms we have strengthened local partnership arrangements through health and well-being boards. These will provide a forum where commissioners of services, local authorities and providers can discuss the future shape of health services. As I have said, local cases for clinical change should be driven from a local level. We know that these reconfigurations work best when a partnership approach underlies them.
The NHS is one of the greatest institutions in the world. Ensuring that it is sustainable and that it serves the best interests of patients sometimes means taking tough decisions, including on the provision of urgent and emergency care. However—and this is the thought which I leave with your Lordships—those decisions are made only when the local NHS, working with local people and local authorities, is convinced that what it proposes is absolutely in the best interests of its patients.