Some hospitals are announcing that they cannot take any more patients. The reason is obvious, we are trying to run a health service with inadequate resources.

Party manifesto’s, including the Lib Dems, focus on how much more money they will put into the health service. Money itself will not solve the problem if it goes into further efforts at reorganisation, consequent redundancy payments to highly paid managers, who are often re-employed, to redundancy pay for nurses, who are then replace by agency nurses.

The problem is that we do not have the staff and the beds. People who are ill should not have to wait for many hours before they can be treated or taken to a ward for proper nursing care.

We have a benchmark of four hours which is far too long for people who are not well to have to sit in a waiting room. I recently waited with my wife for 11 hours at Glenfield hospital having been referred for urgent consultation with a heart specialist by her GP.

A civilised and rich country should be able to do much better than this. OECD figures illustrate the poverty of our provision. (http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/hospital-beds-2014-1_hosp-beds-table-2014-1-en)

In one the richest EU Countries, Germany, in 2006 there were 8.3 beds per thousand inhabitants. In 2012 there were 8.3 beds per thousand inhabitants.

In a much poorer EU country, Poland, in 2006 there were 6.5 beds per thousand inhabitants and in 2012 there were 6.5 beds per thousand inhabitants.

In the UK, which some would claim is one of the richer EU countries, there were only 3.5 beds per thousand inhabitants in 2006, and by 2012 this had actually fallen to 2.8 beds per thousand inhabitants.

It is not difficult to understand why we have a crisis in the NHS. We have been cutting the number of beds, and now we do not have enough.

D Walker 16 Jan 2014

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