Friday 27 March 2015

NHS problems 'at their worst since 1990s'.



Services in the NHS in England are deteriorating in a way not seen since the early 1990s, according to a leading health think tank. The King's Fund review said waiting times for A& E, cancer care and routine operations had all started getting worse, while deficits were growing. It said such drops in performance had not been seen for 20 years. But the think tank acknowledged the NHS had done as well as could be expected, given the financial climate. Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund, which specialises in health care policy, said: "The next government will inherit a health service that has run out of money and is operating at the very edge of its limits. There is now a real risk that patient care will deteriorate as service and financial pressures become overwhelming." He said in terms of how standards were slipping - not how low they had reached - the situation was the worst it had been since the "early 1990s". The report noted much of the deterioration has happened in the second-half of the Parliament with many measures of performance being maintained in the first few years

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