The Guardian view on the NHS: set up to fail by being underresourced to meet demand (15 November 2022)

Summary

The NHS and social care systems need more money. If there is anything else that they need as much, it is honesty from the government. Post-Covid, the UK’s health systems are in a perilously fragile state. As analysis by the Guardian showed this week, logjams created by delayed discharges appear to be getting worse. An average of 13,600 hospital beds in England are occupied by patients with nowhere else to go. As well as making new admissions impossible, unnecessarily long stays can make it harder for people to regain their independence after leaving. So far, a £500m emergency fund promised by ministers to ease the pressure has failed to materialise.

It is a symptom of the social care crisis that hospitals find it so hard to discharge people who are well enough to leave.