Can the NHS Survive?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What are the changes needed now to ensure the NHS is sustainable in the future?
The NHS is facing one of the biggest crises in its history. With an ageing population, the increasing cost of drugs and treatments, and lack of funding for social care, the service is under more pressure than ever and the cracks are already starting to show. So will the system be able to cope in future as the UK's population gets older - and can the NHS survive?
David Aaronovitch hears from expert witnesses including Dame Julie Moore, Chief Executive of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and John Appleby, Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust.
Producer: China Collins.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.9 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David O'ronovich. |
| 0:07.4 | This week, we're getting briefed on the NHS |
| 0:09.8 | and asking, with spiraling costs and ageing population |
| 0:13.7 | and less money for local councils which fund social care, |
| 0:17.2 | is it sustainable in its current form? |
| 0:26.9 | No. is it sustainable in its current form? The British Red Cross says it has been helping |
| 0:29.5 | in what it calls a humanitarian crisis |
| 0:31.7 | in NHS accident and emergency departments in England. |
| 0:35.3 | What's different about this year is we're just not coping. |
| 0:39.0 | The situation at the moment is the worst I've seen it since I qualify. |
| 0:42.4 | The real difference now is that I'm unable to see that there is any light at the end of the tunnel. |
| 0:47.7 | The key word there was different. |
| 0:50.8 | The sense that the cost of healthcare, driven above all by an ageing population, |
| 0:55.6 | has now run beyond our capacity or willingness to pay, |
| 0:59.4 | and that it's downhill from here. |
| 1:01.8 | Is the NHS, as it currently is, if we don't change anything, we don't do anything, is it sustainable? |
| 1:07.0 | No. |
| 1:09.6 | Good evening. That was Lord Patel, whose House of Lords NHS sustainability committee |
| 1:14.6 | reported this week and advocated major change. |
| 1:18.6 | As things are now, the service is not sustainable. |
| 1:22.6 | That's a frightening thought. |
... |
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