the number of people in the uk hasjumped between the mid 1990s and today. that is a big increase in just 25 years. and crucially, the number of over 65s shown in red has been rising rapidly. and that s the group which needs far, far more care from doctors and from the nhs. it s a trend expected to continue in the future, and that is projected to put even more pressure the nhs. so, demographic changes is definitely a pressure for nhs and social care systems. it s not necessaryjust being older, it s the fact that as we age, we tend to develop multiple long term conditions, so we might have diabetes and dementia, we might have a mental health condition and a cardiovascular disease. and then the nhs is needing to deal with those multiple problems all at the same time towards the end of people s lives. but a lot of those conditions
of the ambulances in for things like x rays and ct scans, and then taking them back out to the ambulances to wait to be seen by doctors. but of course, it is utterly wrong to be doing that. those ambulances are needed to be out on the road so the paramedics can do theirjob in patients home. so the paramedics can do theirjob in patients homes. the pressure on a&e and ambulance services this winter has been intense, with long waits, both to see patients and crucially, to move the most sick into another part of the hospital for further treatment. to find out what s really going on, we need to go back to our example hospital. to really understand the problems that are surfacing in a&e, we need to look deeper into the hospital, into the wards where thousands of patients stay overnight to be treated. in england at any one time, the number of hospital beds available to the nhs is about 100,000 in total.
definitely adds some complication, it being a means tested system where individuals have to pay for themselves. but i say right now, the issue is whether you can pay for care yourself or not, or whether the government is paying for you. there just isn t the capacity to buy the social care you need. i think rishi sunak, the prime minister, described this as the number one problem for the nhs at the moment. and there has been more government funding, £500 million, which sounds like a lot of money, in september and then another 200, 250 million emergency funding just before christmas. is that the best way to be spending that money, or is there a more sustainable, more efficient way to fund social care? you re right, £750 million, to those of us, like normal people, that sounds a huge amount of money, but the social care budget is more than £20 billion a year, so actually it s quite a small portion of the overall budget. some of the all party committees in the house of commons have look
of billions of pounds, 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 increa
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 mjim 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 the hospital, splitting it into parts, and showing how problems in one area of the building can cause huge disruption in others.