Of course this has been in the news for years now.. Longer waiting times, lack of beds, people being encouraged to keep sick elderly people at home.. It's indisputable there is a crisis.
However, I'll say this, and I know it won't go down well, but I feel it needs to be said. If you dialled the Accident & Emergency line, and waited in a room for 4 hours, it was never an emergency and you should have dialled 111.
Secondly, there are far too many ******** calls, and that also needs to be addressed. My dad works as a paramedic and right before the Christmas period got a number of calls out and assessed that the patient could be treated at home over Christmas and the family would just rather say to their kids that their gran had to spend Christmas in hospital than actually keep gran at home in pain in front of the kids, on christmas day. Which I understand. But still don't accept when they are probably aware that there is a lack of beds for people who don't actually need them. What I absolutely detest is how they'd then complain about paramedics when they refuse to take them to hospital after clearly assessing, with 30 years more experience than the family, that this patient DOES NOT need hospital treatment, and take the paramedics name to complain about him/her to the NHS. ****ing disgusting. Paramedics choose to be paramedics to save people's lives, not to act as a taxi driver who only gives lifts to a hospital.
Rant over. My only point is, the reason there's a crisis is because demand is currently over supply and it's quite clear now that more money is not going to be given to the NHS to increase supply. So the solution is to decrease demand. Reduce the number of phone calls coming in, take pressure off the call centres and reduce the number of admissions to people who don't need admissions. There are ways around it still.
Two suggestions:
1: Add a third tier to the emergency categories, in between emergencies and non-emergencies. That way A&E can be reserved for people who need immediate admission, i.e people who are actually dying. Heart attacks, internal bleeding, organ failure etc. Add the second tier for things like broken bones, wounds, anything that's not life threatening basically. And 111 for queries or just anything you know can hold off for a bit.
2: More first aid available for access to the general public. We should have first aid kits within easy access of a road. Because accidents happen on roads. And more people should be signing up for first aid training. I don't know what your excuse is for not being first aid trained. If someone gets hit by a car and is lying in the road dying people are more than happy to stand there gawping, filming and rubber necking. Maybe actually do something a bit more useful.
Plus think about it this way: It's impossible to tell how much a hospital costs to build straight away, but it would not be cheap. We're talking at least £300 million. A good first aid kit costs £200. First aid training costs £1,200 inc VAT for a group of 12. So the £300 million you could use to build a hospital could instead buy 1.5 million first aid kits OR training for 250,000 people. Meeting halfway, 500,000 first aid kits, training for 150,000 people... sounds way better than a hospital. Yes, there are disadvantages. Yes, it won't be just as easy as that. But it sounds way better than building a hospital in one area to me.
Oh and to throw in a third suggestion start charging people for wasting paramedic's time and charge people who need an ambulance because they're too drunk to look after themselves. That will put a stop to it and will stop two problems at once. The NHS isn't a "free service" just because you don't want to drive someone to hospital or because you know they'll have your back if you want to go out. It's time to start taking responsibility for a national service so many are taking for granted. Good day.