so what have we got today well the mirror has splashed on the fact that at least one ambulance
crew and patient had to wait an astonishing 27 hours to be handed over to a e in wales last month
and it seems the crisis in the nhs is getting horrifically worse with weights reported of 26
hours in the west midlands eight and a half hours in london and still nine hours in the northwest
and all of this is in june so it happened in sweltering heat now ben it seems incredible
really to believe that one ambulance crew would have to wait for what is it two shifts
three shifts to hand over two shifts probably to hand over a patient what on earth is going on
yeah well this is all down to systemic failures really so when an ambulance collects a patient
and obviously there are targets for you've got to depending on how well the patient is
the time by which the ambulance has to arrive and get the patient onto the ambulance then of course
they're taken to hospital and then the ambulance and paramedics they try to offload the patient
now if there's too many people in a e they can't offload the patient so the paramedics are stuck
with the patient in the back of the ambulance so it must be clear that these won't necessarily be
life-threatening you know heart attack must be in the cardiac arrest room um there'll be other
ailments perhaps less emergency ailments but because of delays in a e they can't discharge
people from a e into other parts of the hospital because of towards being full and awards are full
because of delayed transfers of care dtc's where people can't be taken out of hospitals and for
example go back to their care homes that's because of the social care crisis it all feeds through so
if you one of the examples it's in this piece by my colleague lucy thornton who's based up
in uh up in yorkshire i mean the example cited is aladdin breaks his leg on a football pitch
playing football um he waits for hours for the the ambulance to get there then of course he's in
the back of that ambulance four hours waiting to um to be offloaded into uh into the hospital now
i'm sure he would have had painkillers so you know that will assuage his pain somewhat
but what it won't do is get him into the treatment room where they can set his leg you can have the
x-rays and all the rest of it so it really does feed through the whole system yeah it's uh the
thought of people being there in pain for a long time as well people falling at home their life may
be not permanently in any kind of danger but uh not able to get up not able to urinate not able
to drink not able to get themselves on ibuprofen while they're waiting if they're on their own
um and being in pain for a long period of time can't move on the hard surfaces getting cold
all the rest of it now keep asking ask us your questions everybody what do you think about this
uh ambulance problem do you think it's a situation where it's to do with funding or is it the fact
that the nhs is just not sorting itself out properly let us know now there's a case study
on that page of a man who watched his mother call an ambulance with breathing difficulties and then
as she waited 13 hours for paramedics to arrive he saw her have a stroke and then a heart attack and
by the time the crews did arrive she'd died this is also part of the problem isn't it ben because
not only is someone waiting to get in a knee while the crew are there waiting to hand over because
the medic has to hand over to another medic with the notes and everything else while the crew are
doing it they can't get and do someone else so in wales last month there was one crew for 27 hours
not helping anybody else but stood there in a queue and i've been in those queues trying to
go into a e it's just you know if they're off the ambulance you're just in a corridor and
there's just 30 people in the corridor all with an ambulance crew stood there um keeping an eye on
them if anything does go wrong but basically stood there twiddling their thumbs fundamentally um and
it means that the unions are saying that people are dying because of this that's right it's a very
serious situation and it is a sense of crisis because of the way that it does all feeds down
through the system you know this has been going on for years i mean it might be more egregious now
i remember about 12 years ago and i was living cardiff playing qriket match and the pictures
that we played on were right next door to the blackberry ambulance station so that's i think
five or six qriket pitches there and one of the uh the teams that we're playing there was a team of
teachers and he slipped on the boundary and broke his collarbone now we were several hundred yards
away from the ambulance station he had to wait i think it was three hours for an ambulance because
the hospital it was only a mile and a half away at the big district general hospital in in cardio
they were all backed up all the ambulances and the crews were all backed up waiting um to offload
patients they could get out on other jobs other sheriffs and you know i've can't remember what we
did with this poor chap who did his collarbone but it was probably paracetamol in towels i guess but
you know this has been going on a while and the reason i raised that example is if that
was happening 12 years ago why is nobody done anything about it so that these examples these
case studies aren't still happening so that there is a better system so that you keep moving people
along you know you do need to clear the system so more efficient way of doing it is you know those
paramedics they don't want to be sat in a corridor with respect to the patient or with the back of
the patient on the back of the ambulance they want to be on to their next one because as soon as they
can pass over the patient to the more specialized um they can get back out and start helping people
yeah now bethenny's companies there says that this is all down to funding susie says what great
name by the way bring me bring her comment back up again i can actually read it before it disappears
susie says thank you so how terrifying what this story government has done to our ambulance
services nhs social care community services are total incompetence and tory negligence lives
lost then the example you gave there was 12 years ago and it's been 12 years since we had the
conservatives in power pretty much um and but the government says in that in that comment in their
story there they said they put 150 million pounds of system funding in place but what on earth is
system funding and there's 150 million even going to touch the sides yeah i you know it's my job to
know what system funding is i've got no idea i can't tell you i'm afraid and i suspect no i
don't i don't suspect it will make a big deal and in the interest of balance we should of course say
um that susie's point um on the comments there about it being the conservatives yeah absolutely
that's fair comment for england of course do you remember that the example i raised and the worst
case here the 26 hours and 58 minutes that did happen in wales which is of course been
run by labour since the uh the welsh assembly now the welsh government senate was set up in 1999
and you know i think that does say that the whole system across the uk um certainly in britain is is
in crisis and that more needs to be done so it's not necessarily just a part of political thing
although obviously a lot of it does come down to funding and how funding is allocated but it is on
you know it's on all parties to get a grip of this and they're just into parts of the uk where does
wales get its nhs funding from oh well of course yeah that's a plot grant and they're there but
then he decides it's who else can decide how to spend it but yeah the money does come from
central government and you've still got the the the the problems of a social care service is not
connected to the health service and not enough staff coming through not enough hospitals because
those 40 odd promises haven't appeared now ian says try living in a rural area uh we have long
waiting times due to location and not enough ambulances for the size of land they have to
cover i had it's very similar problem uh as you've been not quite saying but uh a couple of years ago
um someone who was at my house and who was an older gentleman fell over and dislocated his elbow
and so not in any immediate life-threatening danger but a lot of agony a lot of agony and
didn't really want to move anywhere because moving it made it feel worse
and all we could do was call an ambulance for him i live in a rural area
looks a bit like that um and all you do is call an ambulance and give him some paracetamol a cup
of sweet tea and i think the ambulance said just give him the 999 hand said to give him
a couple of paracetamol and i think i actually put four down him because it was just taking so long
and it took about two or three hours i think for an ambulance to come and that was
a couple of years ago at a weekend but then when he got to the hospital there was another
couple of hours waiting in that corridor outside and then he had to go for scans and everything
else but it wasn't until the paramedics got here that he could have proper pain relief
so it was hours and hours without with just some paracetamol that was the difficulty
uh and at least the paramedics did have some proper drugs on them but then again the actual
proper treatment he needed was in the hospital and nowhere else so it's uh it's not something that's
particularly simple to deal with unfortunately now keep asking your questions everybody um
it does seem to be there's a there's a fairly big consensus this is all conservative funded
uh it's funding problems but as ben pointed out there it happens in wales as well although their
health grant does come from central government um and it's there is some other stuff going on
obviously here so what's your experiences have you had long rates at ame have you had problems with
anything going on there let us know and this is all going to get worse it would
appear because while these are figures from june the last month and they're from ambulance crews
who've put written down in the survey their worst waiting times and we're coming up to a heatwave
which is going to make people who are ill already even more ill and it's going to make people who
are fine ill as well and there's a survey in the paper that's showing that two in three of us
almost 61 have no faith that if we call an ambulance because we've all heard these stories
ben if we call an ambulance no one is going to turn up for hours so the unions are blaming it
all on tory cuts but is is there i mean we do know there's some more stuff to it what what else can
be at fault here ben well i think to link it to tax one of the dispiriting things at the moment
of course is the tory leadership race where we now have i think a dozen candidates as of this morning
and no one's talking about how we're gonna fund the nhs knowing to be fair is even really talking
about how we're going to reform the nhs if you know if you make the argument it's systemic
problems and it needs to be more efficient or we need to change it or something like that
the entire argument for the tory leadership is about tax cuts and sadji javits who until not very
long ago of course was the health secretary um and pushed through the health and social care levy i.e
the 1.25 horizon international insurance um is now disowning it and satan's going to get rid of it um
he's going to pay for the nhs for three years wasn't it exactly that's you know
he he called i mean if rumor has it as well that he actually wanted more um but now in trying to
draw a dividing line between him and chuck the former chancellor soon act who's uh you know
currently one of the favorites for the leadership uh he's he's disowning his tax rise that he pushed
for um so you know it's not about how we're gonna make the nhs better it's about throwing red meat
to conservative mps and conservative grassroots who of course will decide who our next prime
minister is yet again for the third time running um it's it's about that rather than what we're
going to do for some of the major things they're facing as a country one of which is of course
as we've highlighted on the front page today the the ambulance crisis yeah you think there'd be
some grown-up conversations happening wouldn't you but uh no seems still not now leslie says how come
the nhs is able to manage when we have a different run government i put responsibility down to
current 12 years of austerity but also down to the centralization of services which of course
the last labour administration had a part in as well isn't it time we went back to local small
hospitals with a eas that support those who need care but not the urgent specialized care
uh cottage hospitals um casualty units of some sort you know urgent care units and stuff like
that where you can go in and get treated i've had to use urgent care unit once twice with my
daughter and they're brilliant but they they've got an urgent care unit because they used to have
an a e and that's shut down you know that's gone a long way away now so it's it's a money-saving
thing to have an urgent care unit instead of an a e what you need is the ales plus urgent care
units further out so like ian says if you're in a rural area if you're in cornwall or somewhere
you know there's only two hospitals or something between all the people there
um and actually have cottage hospitals perhaps which is a really good way of getting patients
back into the community wasn't it it was you once you were better enough to get out of hospital but
still needed some assessments or some help before you get back home or go into your care home
or someone needed respite care you went to the cottage hospital for a little bit of recovery for
an extra week or so before you went home that made so much sense and they shut all those down because
funding and i believe that happened under the labour government so perhaps leslie's got a point
we'll have to see is there any of you heard any whispers about cottage hospitals or more
more urgent care units ben not so much that i mean everyone does talk about even reforming the nhs
if you've got a broken arm do you need to go to the massive hospital that also deals with heart
surgery lung transplants brain tumors would you you know would it be better if you know if you
keep playing football in school playgrounds today you pull over and break your wrist
why not go to a smaller hospital that connects right here someone can set it and say come back
in six weeks you know and have another look at it and you do need to go and keep five six hours in a
e um where more urgent cases quite rightly will be pushed ahead of you but it'd be better off i would
have thought going to a smaller unit where you've got on-hand people who know what they're doing
but they're not trained to deal with with much more serious cases uh you know say someone who
broke the risk several times playing football as a kid um you don't necessarily need to go to
the district general hospital that deals with everything and there should be more localized
units and you talk about um earlier the heat wave coming up now that's going to put extra pressure
because of course people with respiratory problems such as asthma they're going to find it more
difficult you know i'm making sure i carry my blue and halo this week and i don't always necessarily
make sure i've got on me um kids will be out you know playing in lakes reservoirs streams
rivers that's going to cause problems do they slip or worse that will put pressure on the nhs
and then of course there's the elderly who do find it at the extreme temperatures more of a
challenge and you know if it's very very cold more elderly people die if it's very very hot
more elderly people die um so that's going to put extra pressure in the coming week and perhaps two
weeks more uh in this current heat wave that's gonna put more pressure on the nhs as well
yeah they're talking about maybe over 40 degrees in london and south and south east uh by the
weekend so make sure you have six glasses of water a day everybody if you're watching this
now um keep asking us your questions what are your experiences the nhs what do you put this down to
and what would you like done about it because the only real way is for taxes to go up to spend more
uh or to spend it more wisely that could also be an option of course now elaine says the problem
with creating more hospitals is there's not enough staff to man them stopping the nursing bursary has
dramatically reduced people going into nursing they did the same thing with pharmacists as
well elaine and yeah it just stops people coming through the system which means there's less staff
which means you have you know fewer patients that get treated and you have longer backlogs
and it will take years to overcome that if there was a change of government or an attitude tomorrow
and they started bringing back the nursing bursary you've still got what five years ben before they
actually start hitting the system something like that and there's currently about a hundred
thousand vacancies in the nhs um and one thing that's gonna become a massive issue possibly this
week probably next is the pay review bodies report um for various public sector professions and it'll
include doctors and nurses and whether or not what they recommend is taken up by the government so
if the government i think they said recommended three percent pay rises um for most nhs staff
more if you're on a particularly lower ban but around three percent um and if the pay review body
comes up with four percent if the government goes with that and bearing in mind the current rate of
inflation is 9.1 so a four percent pay rise is a real terms cuts and inflation is supposed to be
hitting 11 this autumn or certainly by christmas so even allowing for that real terms cut if the
government says yes to a four percent pay rise having budgeted for a three percent pay rise
the nhs needs to find about an extra billion pounds um to fund that one percent difference
now if there's no more money forth coming from the treasury and it's almost certainly it won't
be because every tory leadership candidate at the moment i'm talking about how they you know
going to cut taxes not i want to spend more on the nhs then they'll have to come from existing
budgets within the nhs or you'll have to find it from somewhere else cut something else in order
to fund the wage rise but then if you don't pay people enough money are they going to want to go
into the health service as i said already 100 000 vacancies that'll get worse if more people leave
because they think they can earn better money elsewhere so it does become well if we don't
fund this are we going to make things worse again because more people will leave and yeah
you