The Prime Minister will hold emergency talks with NHS and care leaders in an attempt to reverse Britain’s winter healthcare crisis. In a sign of the scale of the problems facing the NHS, Rishi Sunak will spend Saturday focusing on how to ease the pressure on frontline services.
But Mr Sunak has been warned that the rare weekend meeting is unlikely to reverse the NHS’ fortunes, which have been blamed on “years of inaction”. Senior doctors say the NHS is on a knife edge, with many A&E units struggling to keep up with demand and trusts and ambulance services declaring critical incidents.
Discharge rates fell to a new low in England last week, with only a third of those patients ready to be released from hospital actually leaving. Mr Sunak, during a visit to a school on Friday, said he recognised that the NHS was “under enormous pressure”.
