More on the British National Health Service

Posted on by John C. Goodman

In December, 54,000 people in England had to wait more than 12 hours for an emergency admission…. The average wait time for an ambulance to attend a “category 2” condition – like a stroke or heart attack – exceeded 90 minutes. There were 1,474 (20%) more excess deaths in the week ending December 30 than the 5-year average….

OECD data show Britain ranks near the bottom among rich countries for the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people. And, while the NHS ranks high on the number of hospital staff per 1,000 of the population, it ranks much lower when we look at just the number doctors and nurses.

The NHS is the fifth biggest employer on earth.

John Phelan at Econlib.org

 

1 thought on “More on the British National Health Service”

  1. My own reading of the crisis ( as a rank amateur) is that there may not be a lack of hospital beds. The problem is how long patients are staying in the beds that do exist. One reads of many, many cases where elderly patients have healed, more or less — but are not discharged because there are no nursing homes or group homes or just plain old extended families to take them in.

    This painful shortage can be remedied much faster than training more doctors or building more hospitals. It is not cheap, though, and my impression is that England often votes for cheap.

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