NHS: Wound Care

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Baroness Wheeler

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop a strategy for improving the standards of wound care in the NHS.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, in my noble friend’s unavoidable absence, I shall ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper. Wound care is a massive challenge to the NHS, but it currently lacks priority, investment and direction. This debate is designed to press the Government to recognise the need for urgent action and for the development of a strategy across care providers for improving the standards of wound care.

I am delighted that so many noble Lords with expertise on this highly important matter have put their names down to speak. It will ensure that we can cover a wide range of issues across medical, nursing and patient care and the quality of medical supplies. It will also give the Minister the stepping stone for developing the national strategy that I hope he will recognise is sorely needed.

A staggering 2 million patients are treated for wounds every year at a cost of more than £5 billion. The overwhelming majority of this figure goes towards paying for nursing care costs rather than products such as bandages. In other words, the cost is more than, for example, we spend on tackling obesity, which is the centre of major national campaigns. Treatment costs include more than 700,000 leg ulcers and 80,000 burns. Pressure sores also feature highly, with estimates of an 11% increase overall each year.

While 60% of all wounds heal within a year, a huge resource has to be committed to managing unhealed wounds. The NHS response is very variable. Healing takes far too long; diagnosis is not good enough; and inadequate commissioning of services by clinical commissioning groups compounds the problem, with undertrained staff and a lack of suitable dressings and bandages. There has also been a very worrying drop in the number of district nurses, whose role in ensuring safe and effective wound care in the community is crucial.

Ideally, 70% of venous leg ulceration should heal within 12 to 16 weeks and 98% in 24 weeks. In reality, however, research shows that healing rates at six months have been reported as low as 9%, with infection rates as high as 58%. Patients suffer and the cost of non-healing wounds is substantially greater to the NHS. The failure to treat wounds swiftly and effectively can lead to more serious health problems, such as sepsis, which is often the result of an infected injury; we also know that foot ulcers on diabetics can lead to amputations if they are not dealt with properly.

The situation will only be turned around with a nationally agreed strategy to reduce variation, prevent wounds getting worse and improve outcomes. Wound care therapy strategies are needed and national care pathways for wounds must be established to cover the complexity and variety of wounds, using evidence-based health economic data and academic and clinical expertise. The Bradford study and survey that is summarised in the Lords’ Library brief for this debate—a good brief but sadly received only yesterday—underlines the point about the importance of evidence-based care, with nearly one-third of patients interviewed in the study failing to receive an accurate diagnosis for their wound. As the study puts it:

“Wound care should be seen as a specialist segment of healthcare that requires clinicians with specialist training to diagnose and manage. … There is no doubt that better diagnosis and treatment and effective prevention of wound complications would help minimise treatment costs”.


Dedicated wound clinics in the community are also needed, alongside a co-ordinated treatment plan to achieve best outcomes for patients. A focus on the prevention of wounds, as well as treatment and healing of wounds, is also very important. The NHS must also invest in high-quality bandages and dressings, in contrast to the current skimping that takes place in many areas. We know, however, that with the NHS as financially hard pressed as it is, there is huge pressure to reduce the costs of medical equipment and clinical supplies such as dressings. The result is that in the procurement of dressings and other forms of treatment, there is not enough emphasis on the cost of patient care and too much focus on the unit cost of products. Not only does this lead to poorer and more costly outcomes for patients but there are a number of unwelcome side-effects. Products will be less innovative and effective; a reduced amount of educational support will have a detrimental effect on patients; there will be fewer appropriate treatments available; and all this will lead to job losses if there is less sourcing from high-quality British suppliers and manufacturers.

With cost as the primary driver, suppliers to the NHS will have a race to the bottom, compromising quality. Poor-quality dressings simply cannot withstand the rigour required to produce effective healing. It is massively counterproductive. Reduction in the availability of clinically appropriate dressings, which comprise only 10% of costs, will result in patients suffering as wounds take longer to heal. An increased burden on the NHS will follow and the result is longer hospital stays, particularly for the elderly, more readmissions, compromised quality of life and repeated visits to GPs and community services.

Of course, we fully support improvements in the way that medical equipment and other supplies are procured. I am not sure whether, in his absence, I have to declare my noble friend Lord Hunt’s interest and commitment to these matters as president of the Health Care Supply Association but I am sure he will value it being mentioned. We also support the work of my noble friend Lord Carter and his 2015 review on how the NHS can avoid unwanted and unnecessary variations in the cost of supplies. The overall aim of his review was to see how the NHS could reduce spending by £5 billion by the 2020-21 financial year. It proposed £600 million in savings for supplies, half of this to be saved before October 2018; limiting the NHS to 40,000 products instead of 300,000, with an overwhelming majority of this—80%—going towards a newly revised supply chain process; as well as replacing local formularies with a national formulary.

Although we welcome the report’s efforts at saving the NHS money, we need to ensure that any shift in focus to the short term will not lead to the knock-on effect of costs rising in other clinical areas. There is also strong concern that the short-term focus could lead to a scarcity of supplies in the future. I would be grateful to hear reassurances from the Minister on the steps being taken to guard against these two unwanted outcomes. Evidence clearly shows that the current problems can only worsen. The average number of adult wounds that every CCG will have to manage is expected to rise from 11,200 in 2012-13 to 23,000 in 2019-20.

The Government urgently need to get a grip, with a nationally driven strategy. Without it, patients will receive worse care for their injuries and the financial burden on other parts of the NHS will continue to increase because patients will develop chronic wounds or catch an infection that could lead to potentially life-threatening illnesses. I look forward to the contributions of noble Lords to this very important debate and to the Minister’s response.