NHS faces ruin unless drastic changes are made, report says
The NHS faces financial ruin and is no longer sustainable in its current form, a report by doctors, managers and patients warned.
Hospitals may have to be closed and major changes to the way the health service is run should be brought in to help pull it back from the brink of collapse, the Academy of Royal Colleges, the NHS Confederation and patient group National Voices said.
The alliance urged for politicians to "show more courage" in dealing with the NHS's multi-billion pound deficit, The Times said.
They set out a series of recommendations to rescue the crisis-hit service, including:
A major transfer of services away from hospitals and into the community.
An increase in the number of GP surgeries and health centres.
Greater investment in district nursing and social care.
Science and Medical Editor Lawrence McGinty reports:
Lawrence McGinty said: "All of this is going to give Jeremy Hunt a lot to think about when he travels up to Liverpool, where he will address the NHS Confederations annual meeting tomorrow.
"I think doctors and patients will want to know that if there is to be a major shift of resources from hospitals to the community that that really happens.
"They will want to see the colour of money before anyone starts talking about closing a whole hospital, let alone a hospital department, and I think that will make it very difficult politically to navigate this new course to a new kind of NHS."
An angry exchange between David Cameron and Ed Miliband over the NHS crisis dominated Prime Minister's Questions today.
ITV News' Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen said: "The NHS has dominated the debate in the House of Commons pretty much all day and that started at Prime Minister's Questions with the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband attacking the government's stewardship of the NHS.
"The Prime Minister said that Labour would in fact cut the amount of money spent on the NHS, Labour came back and said that was 'factually wrong' and that they had earmarked £1.2 billion to spend on A&E.
"But as both sides hurl statistics at one another and the debate gets more and more heated, you've got to wonder whether that makes it any easier to make the tough decisions and restructure the NHS."