Accident and Emergency

Debate between Kate Green and Phillip Lee

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lee]

There has actually been a 37% increase in emergency admissions over the past decade, while 65% of hospital admissions are of people over 65. Dementia is doubling as we speak, and 25% of the NHS budget will be spent on diabetes by 2025. I am sorry, but to try to suggest that the genesis of the challenge we face has been during the three years of this Government is simplistic. The most polite way to put it is that the hon. Gentleman is making a simplistic argument.

[Kate Green]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman about our wanting a configuration of services that ensures that patients get the best possible care and saves lives, but does he not agree that, if changes have to be made, transition planning and resources to support the transition are absolutely vital components of success? I have to tell him that, in relation to the reconfiguration we have just gone through in Trafford, I simply have not seen such resources put in place.

[Dr Lee]

I agree with the hon. Lady that the plans for many of the configurations have been somewhat made up on the hoof. They have usually been created and pushed by a series of local issues—such as 19th or 20th-century buildings that can no longer deliver 21st-century health care—but I recognise the need for a plan, and I will come back to that at the end of my speech.

I fear that a perfect storm is looming at the moment. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) will allow me, I will come on to what I think we need to do. The perfect storm is that we have infrastructure that is not fit for purpose, too many hospitals that we cannot staff properly—one of the contributory factors in Mid Staffordshire was poor staffing levels, because it was trying to work over two hospital sites for a population that is not big enough to support one—and an ageing and increasingly obese society, as well as changes in people’s attitudes to pain and suffering and to seeking health care.

I have not yet heard a speech about the type of presentations occurring in casualty departments. Such presentations are rarely accidents and are extremely rarely emergencies. We must ask ourselves how we can address that. I am standing here with a dreadful cold and feeling pretty lousy. I have seen hundreds of patients who have presented to me as a GP or in A and E feeling like I do, but I will not go either to my GP or to A and E, because I understand that I have a viral infection that will get better by itself. The problem at the moment is that people just rock up at A and E because they think that it is the only place they will get seen, and no one questions whether they should just not bother turning up.