The NHS crisis keeps getting worse. Now, because doctors don’t want to work “anti social hours” and due to work regulations, some hospitals are in danger of imploding during weekends. From the Telegraph story:
Patients’ lives are at risk in NHS hospital wards that are “on the brink of collapse” due to a critical shortage of out-of-hours doctors and growing numbers of the elderly. Some hospitals narrowly avoid “catastrophe” every weekend, research by the Royal College of Physicians has found, because doctors’ shifts are limited by the European Working Time Directive and they do not want to work anti-social hours. Some are “struggling to cope” with the volume of older patients. Many are discharged in the middle of the night or shunted around “like parcels” to free beds for new arrivals.
If the problem is not tackled there will be more tragedies like the Mid Staffs scandal, in which up to 1,200 mainly elderly patients died from substandard care.
Centralized control! Single Payer! Warning! Warning! Warning!
