1/11 Today’s latest performance figures from @NHSEngland (August A&E and July RTT/cancer) show the scale of the challenge the frontline NHS is currently facing...and how hard frontline staff are trying to meet that challenge! bbc.co.uk/news/health-45…
2/11 Scale of demand increase in A&E services very concerning. Trusts were told to plan for a 1.1% increase in A&E attendances this year despite last year’s 1.9% increase. August 2018 figures show a 3.7% increase compared to last Aug (recognise we need to be careful re type 1-3).
3/11 Today’s A&E stats: trusts told to plan for a 2.3% increase in emergency admissions, despite last year’s 3.2% increase. Latest, August 2018 figures, show a huge 6.5% increase versus August 2017. A number of difficult points logically follow given this scale of increase..
4/11 Today’s large A&E demand increase stats: trusts will find it difficult to meet A&E targets and provide best quality of care with this scale of increase, particularly given workforce shortages & physical capacity constraints in A&E departments...tho’ hey’ll try their best!
5/11 Trying to cope with this level of A&E demand increase will mean an even more tired workforce, unpredicted pressure on CCG finances and an obvious knock on impact on elective and other activity. Not a surprise that cancer and RTT performance under such pressure.
6/11 I can‘t help thinking there’s too much of a disconnect between “we’re heading for much higher health and care demand in the future due to our ageing population” and what’s actually happening now. Isn’t that much higher demand now upon us and aren’t we underprepared for it?
7/11 Today’s figures showing the speed of deterioration in performance against the cancer target and the speed of growth in the elective waiting list and 52+ week waiters should give us major cause for concern. This is all despite trusts working absolutely flat out.....
8/11 There is at least one good bit of news in today’s performance statistics - good to see that 111 is handling nearly 10% more calls (1.3m calls in total) compared to August 2017. Shudder to think what A&E / primary care performance would look like without this.
9/11 @NHSProviders is voice of provider sector but issn’t the current approach to planning / targets / performance management broken? There seems little point in setting trusts impossible targets at the beginning of the year based on massively over ambitious demand assumptions...
10/11 Does it make sense to sense to set far too ambitious targets and then just see a repeated litany of missed targets month in month out throughout the rest of the year? It’s seriously demotivating for staff working flat out and risks the reputation of the NHS.
11/11 For the avoidance of doubt, there won’t be a trust board member in the country who won’t be distressed that we now have some of the worst cancer, A&E and RTT stats ever...and they will be doing everything they possibly can to improve that performance.
