Following on from my post 'Emergency - What Emergency', where I patiently explained why the NHS Wales' decision to close 7 more Accident and Emergency units was totally beyond any reasonable, acceptable logic, I now learn that there has been a 300% rise in waiting times in some areas with a total ( UK wide ) of 500,000 patients having been forced to wait 30 minutes on trolleys before admission to A&E. Add to that the knock-on effect of ambulances being immobilised because they are unable to get their patients delivered and accepted - as the emergencies they were supposed to be - and you get a pretty horrific picture of what will happen to our emergency services in future.
Whilst being stuck at A&E units, ambulances are unable to answer other emergency calls, making the 'pain to assessment' time even longer than before. The ambulance service is often criticised for failing to respond to calls quickly enough and, once they collect their patient, it takes even longer to get them treated because of the gridlock at A&E. Make no mistake about it - this sometimes fatal delay is due entirely to the Local health Boards cutting services in line with NHS/Government's insistence on meeting ridiculous budgets. With no budget figures being announced year on year, it is impossible to say whether hospitals will have sufficient resources to meet the existing requirement of need, never mind the ever-growing need as the population has expanded over the past decade
Effectively, this 'cost-cutting-by-imposed-lower-annual-budgets' has already made our health services unable to meet the health needs in our communities, whilst being constantly criticised for failing to meet targets that have never been agreed and, consequently are impossible to meet in the first place. So what does this mean in practice ? It means that the patient is being cut to fit the service, instead of the service being adequate to meet current and future need. Even more shocking is the fact that no Needs Assessment or epidemiology study has been conducted in over a decade.
So, David Sissling's statement that "All health boards and hospitals should be operating within their budgets by the end of the current year" will mean that a huge number of us will not get the treatment we need or deserve. I wouldn't be surprised if the NHS will eventually say that " This service ( whichever ) will only be able to deal with X number of patients this year ( X being well below the amount of need ). It's galling to realise that these over-paid, incompetent 'fat-cats' are takingn salaries of around £200,000 a year, whilst they are deliberately denying us life-saving health services. The Minister, Leslie Griffiths, Dr Shortland, Tony Jewell ( incarnate ), Joanna Jordan, the Local Health Boards, and the entire Welsh Government should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for lying to us about service cuts that will inevitably lead to a greater number of patient deaths, before they reach hospital. Make no mistake about this situation, patients are already receiving inadequate treatment whilst in hospital, as less staff are urged to do more work in processing patients quicker in order to discharge them.
Why then is 'the tail wagging the dog' by allowing these so-called Public Servants to fail in their duty to us as our elected representatives ?????? I could offer my opinions, but I'd rather hear yours, please. R. W.
P.S. Our Dear Lady, Leslie Griffiths is now more concerned about providing welsh-speaking staff to wlesh-speaking patients. If that isn't getting your priorities screwed up, I don't know what is !
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