Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 63
63
Accepted
The NHS responded quickly and strongly to the demands of the pandemic, but compared to...
Conclusion
The NHS responded quickly and strongly to the demands of the pandemic, but compared to other health systems it “runs hot”—with little spare capacity built in to cope with sudden and unexpected surges of demand such as in a pandemic. Recommendations and lessons learned
Government response summary AI-generated
The government acknowledges the NHS's limited surge capacity and states this experience should lead to more explicit, monitored surge capacity in long-term NHS organisation and funding. It also commits to developing new IPC protocols for pandemics and conducting comprehensive analysis of current latent capacity in critical care units.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
The experience of the demands placed on the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic should lead to a more explicit, and monitored, surge capacity being part of the long term organisation and funding of the NHS. 9. The NHS should develop and publish new protocols for infection prevention and control in pandemics covering staffing, bed capacity and physical infrastructure. In developing these protocols the NHS should consider the importance of maintaining access for people accompanying some patients such as advocates for people with learning disabilities and birthing partners. 10. Comprehensive analysis should be carried out to assess the safety of running the NHS with the limited latent capacity that it currently has, particularly in Intensive Care Units, critical care units and high dependency units.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗