Beds in the NHS

摘要

January was a tough month for British health ministers, as a flu epidemic put the inadequacies of the NHS on the front page of most newspapers, but then it's been a tough two decades for patients and staff in the NHS. The political remedy for the chronic underfunding of the NHS has been perpetual revolution through reorganisation. Recent acute hospital and NHS service reconfigurations around Britain show how management and political reputa- tions have been staked on exploiting the apparently bottomless pit of clinical productivity to fund investment But judging by rising waiting lists, growing patient dissatisfaction, and low morale among staff, modernisation appears to be a recipe for reducing capacity and loss of service.