Amanda Pritchard blames inadequate social care, staff shortages and years of cuts to bed numbers for service failings
Frontline NHS services are already under as much pressure as they usually face in the winter, due to lack of staff and hospitals’ inability to discharge patients, the health service’s boss said on Wednesday.
In a speech to senior health service managers, NHS England’s chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, admitted that cuts to the number of beds had gone too far. But she blamed difficulties in social care for hospitals being left unable to admit the growing number of seriously ill people needing care urgently and patients being left stranded in the back of ambulances outside A&E units.
