It is all too easy for me - through personal experience of the care given to a relative - to blieve that the following is true:

Thousands of elderly National Health Service patients are dying because they are denied intensive care treatment after surgery, a study has found.

A six-year survey of four million operations found that 85 per cent of the most vulnerable patients do not get the intensive care that could save their lives or prevent serious complications.

As a result, it is estimated that up to 5,000 frail and elderly patients die each year because they are not put in intensive care beds for monitoring after their operations.

I remember how my own relative's blood pressure was falling to a dangerously low level after a major operationa few years ago. I believe the problem was only noticed and acted upon in the nick of time. I saw, in the NHS surgery ward where she was lying,just how busy the nurses were. It was not their fault at all. I thought they were all the more heroic because of the difficult conditions in which they worked. It was the fault of the lack of staff. In short, it was the fault of the NHS.

In The Welfare State We're In I made a cautious assessment of how many people die unnecessary, premature deaths because we have the NHS. I also wrote about the discrimination against the elderly. Of course it readily follows that the biggest number of unnecessary deaths take place among the elderly. This article, in the Sunday Telegraph, adds to my feeling that my cautious minimum estimate of 15,000 a year dying prematurely because our healthcare system is absurdly low.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS

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