December was bad for NHS, but the Flu wave has thankfully (just) peaked

Hopefully the worst is over for the NHS this winter, but thousands of people are dying each year due to ambulance and A&E delays.

This week several hospitals declared criticial incidents due to winter pressures. The pressure in December was mainly due a very large flu wave, which has - thankfully - just peaked. While there might be a second peak (as there was last year), hopefully there will now be a rapid decline in flu infections, although hospital capacity will remain under severe pressure for a few weeks yet.

Today also saw the release of December’s NHS performance indicators and pretty much everything got worse in December compared to November. Ambulance response times increased - going up to 47 minutes for category 2 calls (vs an 18 minute target) although they did not reach the extreme delays we saw in December 2022. Hospital A&E’s remained overloaded, with tens of thousands of sick patients waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted. Most of these patients will have received ‘corridor care’, described as “unsafe and undignified” this week by the Royal College of Physicians.

What is also abundantly clear is the degradation in NHS ability to cope with winter since 2019. This degradation has consequences. While it certainly makes it harder to deliver routine care in the NHS and damages staff morale and retention, its most important impact is on those who desperately need emergency care. This week The Guardian reported an analysis suggesting that over 1000 patients a day in 2024 might have been harmed by delays in ambulance handovers. Last year, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that 14,000 people died in 2023 because of waits over 12 hours for a hospital bed.

I feel like I sound like a broken record, simply highlighting over and over each winter how bad things get. But this is because the NHS is a broken system and stutters over and over each winter. While the Labour government has promised action and has started various initiatives for the NHS, many of these will take years to have impact even if they are successful, not least because lack of experienced staff is a key issue and staff don’t grow on trees. So, unfortunately, I am not that hopeful about next winter. I do hope that the least we could do is to relearn the lessons on infection control within hospitals and GPs - cleaner indoor air and high quality (FFP2, not the blue surgical ones!) mask wearing for staff and visitors during peak winter months at the very least.