End corridor care as it is badly undermining the NHS - Ismail Mulla
Headlines over the past few weeks have been illustrative of just how broken the NHS is. The health service that was once considered a crown jewel of Britain is now at that tipping point where a lot of the public are asking, is it even salvageable.
It seems as if the NHS in its attempts to become all things to all people is at risk of becoming nothing for anybody. A&Es are packed with patients, ambulance crews are struggling to get to patients in need and there is the abhorrent practice of corridor care that has become uncomfortably commonplace in many hospitals.
As I have repeatedly said in the past, the answer to fixing the NHS actually lies outside of the organisation itself. Too much emphasis has been placed on hospital care and not enough on care in the community. The failure to fix social care is now coming home to roost as we face an ageing population and this is just the start. Things will only get worse unless social care is fixed once and for all.
The country does not need another review into social care. There already is one that is sitting on the shelves of Whitehall.
The latest one being undertaken by Baroness Casey will not lack the rigour required of a review but a lot of experts have already said it is unlikely to provide any different answers.
When it comes to corridor care, there should be “howls of outrage” about deaths linked to long emergency department waits, as the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), Dr Ian Higginson, says.
He went on to add that patients are now “not surprised” when they are cared for in a corridor because the issue has been “normalised” and that doctors “can’t deliver care in corridors”.
If anyone wanted to see that the NHS itself was not healthy then the practice of corridor care is a vivid illustration of this point.
Dr Higginson warns that emergency departments across the country “are in big trouble” – with corridor care being the main issue.
Everyone has the right to be cared for in a dignified manner when they are at their most vulnerable. Not being seen to on a trolley by staff that are under immense pressure.
It is worth reiterating that this is not the fault of frontline staff. Whatever your views on recent strike action by resident doctors or indeed industrial action taken by other healthcare workers in the past, there is no denying that by and large frontline staff are doing an admirable job in the most testing of circumstances.
Which is why it was disconcerting to read of a man allegedly attacking hospital staff in Newton-le-Willows with a weapon after he was denied an appointment.
I get that people can get frustrated. I’ve found myself exasperated by the healthcare system in the past. But taking it out on staff is never acceptable. We must all remember to keep frustrations in check. After all, it is ultimately systemic failings that are the reason for the malaise the NHS finds itself in.
We, as the public, also have a responsibility in how we use the NHS. Yes, it is our taxes that are paying for the health service but we must recognise that unless we’re sensible, demands will overwhelm the care that we take for granted.
I was left incredulous by the analysis showing that in the past five years A&E medics dealt with almost 1.9 million cases of people seeking help for a headache.
Almost 1.4 million A&E attendances in England from 2020/21 to 2024/25 were due to a cough and 1.2 million were for a sore throat. One million A&E attendances were due to earaches.
Now it would be unfair to label every single one of these as a nuisance. Some may have legitimately felt the need to visit A&E but the numbers hardly scream common sense.
The issue really is that primary care is increasingly feeling remote for people and they feel they have no choice but to visit A&E.
The Government’s emphasis on care in the community is to be welcomed but it really needs to double down because diverting large numbers away from hospitals cannot come fast enough for the NHS.
And on the point of corridor care, the Health Secretary has pledged to end this practice by the next general election, “if not sooner”.
I urge Wes Streeting to make it sooner because it is not a great advert for universal healthcare free at the point of use. It undermines the NHS and we could all be left paying the price should the public no longer see value in a publicly funded health service.