Poverty is causing catastrophes for the NHS, JRF warns reforms aren’t enough
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) have published new research that provides a harrowing insight into how poverty is affecting our national health service.
Published just yesterday, 18th March 2024, new research by the Kings Fund, which was backed by JRF – the UK’s leading charity that helps people facing poverty – outlined that people living in deprived environments are more likely to be unable to access NHS care.
The findings can be described as nothing short of heartbreaking. Looking into them more closely, The Kings Fund found that health inequalities affect all NHS services but the most acute care, which is the most expensive, is ‘running hot’ with health problems made worse by poverty and not being addressed before they become serious. Hospital data shows a direct correlation between higher levels of deprivation and higher emergency admissions.
In addition, experts found that 30% of people living in the most deprived areas have turned to 999, 111, A&E or a walk-in centre because they were unable to obtain a GP appointment. This is compared to just 10% of people who live in the least deprived communities in the UK.
The increase in length of stay in critical care beds was also discovered to be great among more deprived groups. Between 2017/18 and 2022/23 the average length of stay in critical care increased 27% for people in the poorest communities but just 13% for the least disadvantaged.
Against this backdrop, at the beginning of this year, research that was led by Michael Marmot – one of the UK’s leading public health experts – unveiled that more than one million people in England died prematurely in the decade after 2011, of which poverty was partly responsible. This research, alongside the new findings from The Kings Fund, suggests it is now a matter of emergency that poverty-related issues are confronted.
JRF are now calling on politicians to ‘get serious about tackling hardship’ as part of their pitch to the public ahead of the general election. Likewise, the charity have also claimed that if authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the problem, the effects of poverty risk becoming a ‘mounting catastrophe’.
Paul Kissack, chief executive of JRF, said: ‘As we approach a general election, any political leader serious about turning the tide on worsening health in our country, and protecting the NHS, needs to get serious about tackling poverty and hardship. Deep poverty is driving pressure into an already overstretched health service. With acute health care running hot, no serious plan for our NHS can be made that doesn’t address poverty.’
‘And improving the nation’s health goes well beyond the NHS,’ Kissack said. ‘We live in a country where millions of people – including a million children – face destitution, going without essentials such as food, toothpaste, or warm clothes. This scale of hardship risks a mounting catastrophe for the nation’s health.’
Kissack added: ‘For the sake of people’s dignity, their health and to protect their NHS, it is time for political leaders to get serious about tackling hardship – addressing poverty as the essential foundation for improving the nation’s health and wellbeing.’
Image: Matt Brown
Extortionate childcare costs forcing Welsh parents into poverty
Food banks in schools illustrate the extremity of poverty amongst children
