Wes Streeting made the appeal as he held a specially convened meeting with NHS England Chief Executive, Amanda Pritchard, and other Trust leads from across the country to discuss growing pressures on urgent and emergency care services. The Department of Health & Social Care says the latest data shows the NHS is going into winter ‘under more strain than ever before’, with record numbers in hospital, and over four times more flu admissions at the end of November compared with the same time last year.
At a meeting on 9 December at NHSE’s London headquarters, Wes Streeting told NHS leaders he does not want to see Trusts prioritising patients who can be seen and discharged more quickly over those with the greatest clinical need. Instead, the DHSC explains, he wants a focus on improving emergency ambulance response times, addressing handover delays, and tackling the longest waits in A&E – putting patients ahead of targets.
He said: “We inherited a broken NHS that saw annual winter crisis as the norm. This year, we’re seeing record pressures on services as we move into December. This winter I want to see patient safety prioritised as we brace ourselves for the coming months. I’m asking Trusts to focus on ambulance delays, handovers, and the longest A&E waits. We’ve already taken immediate action to keep patients safe by ending strikes – meaning this is the first winter in three years without staff on the picket line.
“This government’s Plan for Change sets out our work to bring down waiting lists, alongside the 10 Year Health Plan that will deliver fundamental reform to build an NHS that is there for us all year round.”
The previous week, Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, had set out the Government’s Plan for Change, which includes ‘the priority mission’ of tackling waiting lists to help reduce pressures on the wider health system. The Department of Health & Social Care said reducing the elective waiting list of over 7.5 million would ‘allow the government to deliver on its ambitions for long-term reform, give people the care they need, when they need it, and lay the foundations of a sustainable health system – including in A&E’.
At the meeting, Wes Streeting thanked staff for their preparation and hard work to keep people safe as hospital admissions climb. NHS leaders also gave updates on some of the pressures they are facing across the health system, and shared experiences of managing past winter crises.
The NHS has also already put in place a number of measures to counter expected winter pressures, including:
- Monitoring hospitals 24/7 – to identify those needing targeted support to reduce long A&E waits and avoidable admissions. Using situational reporting, local systems can respond to pressures in real time using live data.
- Expanding same-day emergency care services – meaning over 2.5 million patients a year are being cared for in one day, rather than needing to spend the night in hospital.
- Increasing the number of ‘virtual wards’ – the introduction of nearly 2,000 more virtual ward beds this year has allowed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of patients to receive hospital-level care ‘from the comfort of their homes’.
- Dispatching urgent community response teams – which can treat people in their homes to relieve pressure on hospitals.
- Improving discharge for patients with complex needs – through care transfer hubs at every hospital, increasing the number of discharges by around 10,000 in October compared with the same month in 2023.
- Delivering winter vaccinations – including over 27 million flu, RSV, and COVID vaccinations combined so far.