The crisis in Accident and Emergency – Labour’s response

Where’s the last place you want an emergency waiting to produce an accident – in Accident and Emergency.

But figures appearing over the last weeks suggest a growing crisis there.

Early in June figures from the King’s Fund showed that waiting times in A and E had reached a nine year high.

On 14 June, the Guardian reported that attendances to accident and emergency had hit a record high with 21.739m patients in the first 11 months of 2012-13, with ‘a notably large jump occurring between 2011-12 (21.481m) and 2012-13 (21.739m after 11 months)’.

The knee-jerk response of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was to blame Labour’s GP contract and its out-of-hours provision. But the recent escalation in the figures points to other causes.
As the Guardian’s Health correspondent Denis Campbell writes
‘The figures cast serious doubt on health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s recent claims that the rise in A&E attendances was…