Our useless, mismanaged NHS – double the money, half the beds

As winter approaches, we really are heading for a crisis in the NHS – not enough beds. Twenty five years ago, there were 297,364 hospital beds in the NHS. Just in the last 15 years, the NHS budget has more than doubled from �45bn to over �100bn (plus�more then��200bn of PFI hospitals). But we now have�an astonishingly low�138,000 hospital beds. So where has all our money gone? A doubling in the number of bureaucrats: a doubling in the salaries of these bureaucrats: ten new NHS quango regulators employing tens of thousands of staff and costing billions a year: huge salary increases for our �100,000 a year doctors following the bungled new contracts for doctors (more money, less work): huge pensions� for doctors: and of course �6bn or so wasted on the NHS’s worthless new computer system.

Compared to other developed countries, Britain now has shockingly few beds per 100,000 of population (see diagram). It seems our NHS exists for the benefit of its staff, not its patients.