you can t get to them. it is delays like this that stop paramedics getting back on their own quickly to the next person who needs help. now, we ve pulled together some of the key data, figures that help explain how the nhs is performing and what that means for patients, starting with those ambulances. anyone who calls 999 for an emergency like a stroke or heart attack should get an ambulance in 18 minutes, that s the target. in december, that soared to 93 minutes in england, easily the highest on record. there are 90 patients waiting to be seen at the moment, that is 90, who are still waiting to be seen. our current waiting profile is seven and a half hours. by the time i get home in the morning at eight o clock, some of you will still be here waiting for a doctor. the wait will get up to 12 or 13 hours. when patients reach a&e itself, there is often another long wait. the number turning up has risen
which we ve not invested in our health care system and other countries have. when you look at polling, which is always tricky, but when you look at polling around the nhs and you see that question, should the government be spending more money, the answer is always, generally tends to be yes. when you ask the question, would you like to see your taxes rise to pay for it, it is a much more mixed answer. we see ebbs and flows, so a couple of years ago people were saying, yes, i do want to pay more. i think now with the cost of living crisis, some people feeling, i don t like i can afford it. and there s always that personal view that there must be other part of government spending that could be saved, could be more efficient to move money to the nhs. so you are absolutely right, politicians need to have an honest conversation with the public about, if we want the nhs to be what we ve come to expect it to be, that go to cost more, that s going to require tax increases. if we don t want t
corner of the uk has been battling through its worst winter in a generation. we are running two and three times above our capacity continually, and often more than that. we ve had crises in the nhs before, but doctors say nothing like this. this is undoubtedly a crisis, and it s undoubtedly a national scandal. we simply haven t seen the action that was necessary to improve things along the way. it s been too little and too late. i m jim reed, the bbc s health reporter. i spend most of my time covering the impact of all this on doctors and nurses and their patients. the idea in this programme is different. here i want to explore the underlying causes of some of these problems, and ask what could and should be done to get the nhs back to health. we will take you through
huge advances in medicines, along with changes to our behaviour, like cutting smoking, healthier eating, means it s not unusual to reach our 80s, 90s, even beyond that. but the trend is already putting a huge strain on the nhs. it is thought that over the next ten years, we will need to create another 1millionjobs in health and social care. if we don t prepare for these changes now, and it might not be a winter crisis we will be talking about, but the future of the whole nhs that at stake. to see the latest data on hospitals where you live, you can use the bbc s winter tracker. you just put in your postcode to find the waiting times in a&e orfor operations and ambulances. visit.
are caused by a whole host of things about how we ve lived our lives, so the food we ve eaten, the alcohol we have or haven t drunk, how active we ve been. so if we can help the population think about ageing in a healthy way, living in a healthy way, that can reduce future health care demand. fundamentally, though, the big question is, do we spend enough on health care in the uk? £190 billion on the nhs across the whole of the uk each year. people look at that and it s a really big, huge figure. but i guess the question is, compared with other health systems, how do we compare, and is it enough? yes, so the international comparisons are always a little bit tricky because it is what basis are you comparing on, and changes to gdp can then also change on what you spend on health. generally, it accepted in the uk we spend around a couple of percent less per year on our health care system. if you are doing that for one or two years, it s probably something a health care system can cope wit