It's been known for a long time that more GPs and Practice staff would be needed, and currently the service is experiencing a 'relaxed' time. If a major 'flu epidemic hits next autumn / winter then things could go seriously awry.
So what's wrong? This graphic shows the growth rate of Health and Education over 40 years.
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Unfortunately, Health and Education are lumped together but it's still easy to see that the only time during that period there was any growth in the service was 2005 - during the tenure of the Labour Parliament. Graphs tell part of the story, but detailed figures are rather more interesting...
In 2014, the Commonwealth Fund declared that in comparison with the healthcare systems of 10 other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US) the NHS was the most impressive overall. The NHS was rated as the best system in terms of efficiency, effective care, safe care, co-ordinated care, patient-centred care and cost-related problems. It was also ranked second for equity.
The NHS employs more than 1.5 million people, putting it in the top five of the world’s largest workforces, together with the US Department of Defence, McDonalds, Walmart and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The NHS in England is the biggest part of the system by far, catering to a population of 54.3 million and employing around 1.2 million people. Of those, the clinically qualified staff include 150,273 doctors, 40,584 general practitioners (GPs), 314,966 nurses and health visitors, 18,862 ambulance staff, and 111,127 hospital and community health service (HCHS) medical and dental staff.
The NHS in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland employs 161,415, 84,000 and 66,000 people respectively. In 2014 Populations in those nations were 5.3, 3.1m and 1.8m respectively. England has 54.3m. But we have more people living longer so births are not being offset by deaths. Additionally, there was net migration increase of around 250,000 - mainly from the EU.
However, it's pretty clear that there's something of a dilemma: to fund a growing NHS we need more income from taxation and it's not easy to see where that will come from. Although if Osborne were to abandon his unrealistic (some say batty) intention to eliminate the Government deficit by 2020 then the UK could tread the same path as the US (and just about every other economy) and run a deficit happily, whilst funding the NHS more. But there are no easy answers.