14.11.14
NHS winter fund gets £300m boost as Keogh urges use of pharmacists not A&E
Ill people are being encouraged to visit their pharmacists for mild and common conditions this winter, as A&E departments and GP surgeries face unsustainable mounting pressure and the Department of Health prepares for a surge in demand over winter.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt also announced an additional £300m to help boost the NHS through winter by paying for more staff and extra bed space. Combined with the previously announced £400m winter pot it represents a 75% increase in winter funding compared with last year.
From the new money £25m will go towards widening access to GPs and £50m will top up ambulance services. It will also pay for the equivalent of 1,000 extra doctors, 2,000 extra nurses and up to 2,500 extra beds.
But Hunt warned that A&E could not continue to cope with the brunt of the extra demand, pointing out it was already receiving a million more visits each year than in 2010.
He told the Guardian: “Winter has always been particularly challenging for the NHS. We have been thinking about it particularly hard this year because of the growing pressure on A&E departments.
“Emergency admissions are growing about 3-4% year in, year out. We are very aware that over this winter there is going to be some real pressure there. The pressures are higher than they have ever been before in the system.”
He added: “It is worth also asking the question, is this going to go on like this? Are we going to have to continue having to put more and more sums into the NHS to withstand these pressures?
“It is not sustainable in the long run to say that all the extra pressure in the NHS has to be borne by A&E departments.”
The Royal College of General Practitioners welcomed the extra £25m, saying it would be put to good use. Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the RCGP, also pointed out that last year GPs made 360 million patient consultations, a rise of 40 million on four years ago.
“The best way to alleviate pressures on A&E and other services in secondary care – and to ensure that our patients receive the care that they need and deserve - is to improve access to general practice,” she said.
However the British Medical Association was more scathing in its reaction.
"If the NHS is to stop lurching from one crisis to another it needs a long-term plan rather than a short-term fix,” said Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA Council.
He added: "While extra funding is desperately needed, this announcement is merely a sticking plaster. It masks the fact that a funding gap of £30bn is opening up in the NHS, and does not go far enough to address the underlying reasons why the system is under such extreme pressure.”
He went on to say that pressure on services had been so great this year that many emergency departments had already experienced “spring, summer and autumn crises” in addition to the looming winter one.
“Many hospitals are already at, and in places over, capacity. At the same time, general practice is struggling to meet unprecedented demand in the face of tighter funding,” he said. "Getting to grips with this will require more than short-term injections of money, taken from other overstretched services. There needs to be long-term investment in the NHS and urgent action to address the high number of staff vacancies in both emergency medicine and general practice."
As part of the government’s winter plan to ease pressures on A&E departments and GPs more people are being encouraged to visit pharmacists instead.
NHS England managing director, Sir Bruce Keogh, said: “In other parts of Europe pharmacies are very well-used. Our GPs, frankly, during the winter feel really under strain with people coming in with coughs and colds. A lot of that strain could be relieved if people use pharmacies more.”
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society welcomed the call for more people to visit their pharmacist. RPS president Ash Soni OBE said: “I agree with Sir Bruce pharmacists are an under-used resource in Great Britain. Pharmacists are central to relieving the ever-increasing demand on GPs and A&E staff, enabling those professionals to focus their skills on diagnosing and treating patients needing their care. Greater access to community pharmacists will be of huge benefit to patients, doctors, nurses and the bank balance of the NHS.”
Earlier this year NHE reported on a study from the RPS that showed that A&E visits could be cut by 650,000 and GP consultations by 18 million if NHS England was to provide a national common ailment service through community pharmacies.
Commenting at the time Soni said: “The NHS can’t afford to wait any longer to create capacity in the system. We need to be more strategic and change the services on offer to the public to make best use of the NHS workforce.
“Pharmacists are central to relieving the ever-increasing demand on A&E and GPs, enabling them to focus their skills on diagnosing and treating patients needing their care.
“Fast, same-day access to community pharmacists will be of huge benefit to patients, doctors, nurses and the bank balance of the NHS.”
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