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. 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. doctors say a safe limit for bed occupancy, the numberfull
so you are absolutely right, politicians need to have an honest conversation with the public about, everyone to 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 those tax increases, we need to equally be able to ask what does that mean for what the nhs can offer? the fact that so many more others are living longer is a success story, of course. 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 another1 millionjobs 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 winte
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 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 and 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 in 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 on what basis are you comparing on, and changes to gdp, and then als
it does get tricky when you see a timer come on the call. it s hours ago and you are thinking, oh, gosh, what are you going to turn up to? and they are in a bad state. the health service in every 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 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
people want to do that. so, sally, is some of this historical? because we ve had the nhs and social care as two very different systems in the uk, from the creation of the health service back in the late 40s. yes, so we do have two different fundings for the nhs and social care, and it definitely had 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 x by 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? £750 million.