Striking Doctors Cost NHS £3 Billion
Strikes by junior doctors have cost the taxpayer at least £3 billion, with the 15th round of industrial action in three years set to start at 7am on Tuesday. The Telegraph has the story.
The six-day strike is expected to cost the NHS around £300 million, bringing the total hit to the health service to approximately £3.25 billion, according to analysis by the Telegraph.
This could have paid for around 1.5 million operations, or 15 million outpatient appointments.
The British Medical Association (BMA) ordered the walkouts after rejecting a deal, which it did not put to members, that would have left resident [junior] doctors 35% better off than four years ago.
Wes Streeting said: “This Government was prepared to compromise with the BMA, but there’s only so far we can bend before we snap,” adding that the terms were “a fair deal that many were willing to accept”.
The Health Secretary told the Telegraph: “Instead, we’re facing strike action timed to cause maximum disruption, at a cost now running into the billions.
“That’s billions of pounds taken away from patients and 1,000 new specialist training places this year, that could have delivered millions of operations. But instead that leaves millions in pain, unable to access support because of strikes.
“What’s more, this is deliberately done at a time when the NHS is finally turning a corner, with waiting lists down, which risks putting that recovery into reverse.
“Many on the front line will be increasingly uncomfortable that it is their patients who are paying the price for this action, and it is a price the NHS simply can’t afford.”
With negotiations at a stalemate, Sir Jim Mackey, the head of the NHS, warned hospital leaders to prepare for a “long slog”, saying he feared another year of strikes. The first walkouts in this dispute began in March 2023.
He is seeking to redesign the way the NHS works, so that it is less dependent on resident doctors, and able to provide care more reliably.
The health chief previously raised concerns about the “extortionate” rates set by the union for doctors providing cover, which add to other NHS costs such as cancelling and rescheduling operations and appointments, and wider knock-on pressures on services.
The rates set by the BMA mean a senior doctor covering a 12-hour shift can expect to be paid more than £2,200, with payments exceeding £3,700 for those working a night shift next weekend.
Hospitals have been instructed to maintain at least 95% of operations and appointments over the coming week, with warnings that the union had timed the strikes to prolong disruption beyond the long Easter weekend.
Glen Burley, Sir Jim’s deputy, told a board meeting of NHS England: “It feels like it’s trying to push maximum harm and we will try to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Some junior doctors have boasted that their latest walkout gives them 10 days off during the Easter holidays.
Before the strike, one said the timing was very good for savings on childcare, while another said: “I suspect the ability to have 10 days off will make turnout quite high.”
Worth reading in full.
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Should we send the invoice to the BMA?
I am sceptical of that number.
Since the NHS is not a revenue generator and only a cost centre, the less it does, the less the cost. A doctors’ strike would save the NHS money.
Not treating patients reduces costs. This is why there is a long waiting list, so that in the fiscal year costs are kept within budget and therefore pushed into the next budget period, then the next. It’s “cost-shunting” up the time line. 7 million waiting.
Bonus: tens of thousands will die waiting and thousands more go private instead of waiting. Money saved.
Most of the British population are incapable of understanding that, and that a better service would be delivered if medical care were to be revenue generating – ie competitive, private market – where cost are recovered within the revenue generated, provision can be increased as demand increases funded out of profits, instead of being limited by budget constraints.
Currently the cost of the NHS incident on every citizen is snout £3 500 per annum. You can get a decent private health policy for half that.
On the bright side the blip in ONS reported deaths for April can be attributed to the Easter strike days rather than the heat 🙊
😂😂😂
There are a few studies showing when doctors go out on strike fewer people die. Doctors make errors, errors surgically and medically kill. £3 billion? Sounds ridiculous.
“Striking Doctors Cost NHS £3 Billion”
Correction: Striking Doctors Cost taxpayers £3 Billion.
It’s time to allow the non-pan-bangers to opt out and use the money taken from us to buy from the private market.
The NHS is a Socialist construct to serve ideological and political aims, and increasingly since the 1960s to provide work for the immigrant hordes to justify why we “need” them.