Fixing the NHS will cure the economy as well as patients

For people like me, the prospect of a winter crisis for the NHS is chilling – but getting the UK’s workforce in shape is in all our interests, writes James Moore

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has criticised NHS England’s plans for coping with winter pressures on the health service (PA) (PA Wire)

Winter-time is, for some of us, becoming positively frightening; a season as a Stephen King novel.

The words of Dr Adrian Boyle, the UK’s most senior A&E doctor, profiled in The Independent today, explain why. Dr Boyle told this newspaper that plans drawn up to cope with NHS’s season crisis are “wholly insufficient” for the demands it faces. They allow for less than half of the beds needed to cope with the seasonal storm which traditionally comes along.

For those of us who, like me, have long term conditions, the prospect is chilling. We’re basically being told that we’re on our own – and better learn to swim fast because there mightn’t be a life raft if the ocean gets choppy.