Jeremy Hunt's plans for seven-day NHS 'impossible' under current funding, expert warns

'I’m convinced seven-day services cannot be achieved within current funding. There are huge gaps'

The pledge to extend the NHS to a seven day service has proved controversial, with data about weekend deaths fiercely contested (Getty)

Jeremy Hunt’s pledge to create a seven-day-week NHS will not be achievable for another twenty years, a leading expert has warned.

Professor Julian Bion, from the University of Birmingham who is leading a review into seven-day working, has said funding shortfalls mean the controversial scheme is unlikely to be achieved.

He said: “I’m convinced seven-day services cannot be achieved within current funding. There are huge gaps. I think we’re 20 years away from actually being able to achieve a seven-day service given the current challenges but I would love to be wrong.”

Professor Bion added that patients who fall ill at weekends should not be put in “deep freeze” at the weekends to wait until services resume on Mondays and said he is “reasonably confident” that care is not as good at weekends “which translates to less good outcomes for patients.”

He has called for a greater focus on complication rates than on total mortality rates over weekends as a means of measuring outcomes.

Plans for a seven-day week NHS which have been championed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt have been controversial as the data used to cite that hospital deaths increase over weekends has been fiercely disputed.

A report in May by the Public Accounts Committee suggested that the plans contain “serious flaws” and are “completely uncosted.” It accused the Department for Health of making “no coherent attempt" to understand how staffing levels would be needed for the scheme.

However, the Department for Health has insisted a structure has been planned to support the proposals, saying there are “clear plans to increase capacity in the future in order to deliver a safer, seven-day NHS.”

With additional reporting by PA