Over the last seven days our series, NHS On The Brink, has shone a light on the many crises facing the health service in this region.
Through no fault of hard-working staff, sick and vulnerable patients are being let down badly.
We discovered cancers are going undiagnosed, breast cancer sufferers are waiting too long to be seen, and thousands of people are living each day in debilitating, pain as they wait months to see a dentist or years for a life-changing operation.
These issues have been made worse by the pandemic, but many have been endemic in Norfolk and Waveney for years. What is being done about it?
Alex Stewart, chairman of watchdog Healthwatch Norfolk, said: “It’s not a happy picture.
“You could say we potentially need another hospital, we need more doctors and nurses, but we’re not going to get them.
“A dental school would certainly help. We need more people working at the coalface ultimately, in order to be able to match demand."
How to unblock hospitals
Their latest board papers show each of our hospitals have identified “delayed discharges” and “poor hospital flow” among the most significant contributors to missed targets.
That means the shortage in care home beds and care home workers needs to be treated as an urgent priority.
Mr Stewart said: "We have singularly failed as a country to invest properly in social care. That has a huge impact because it means people languish in hospitals so you can’t get a thorough-flow of people moving out into places they would be better placed to be. Successive governments have failed at that.
“This is not going to be a quick fix and it’s not going to be cheap. We are one of the lowest investors in health and social care.
“But the answer isn’t just investment. People need to recognise that people have to look at using the health service quite differently. There are certain things we can do to manage our conditions, which means people won’t end up presenting in hospital.”
Five years ago a new model of health and social care was announced in England. Integrated Care Systems were supposed to bring together the NHS and care sector in each region to reduce delays and find savings. This clearly has not yet happened, but the model is in place.
We can but hope that this, along with the £12bn which will be generated by the government’s new 1.25 per cent social care tax (money from which will be diverted to the NHS initially), bring real improvements to social care and allow the whole system to start moving again.
A Norfolk NHS spokesman said a "Recovery Board" had been established to make sure that hospital backlogs were addressed as quickly as possible. They said waiting lists were being shared across Norfolk's hospitals to reduce times.
Meanwhile, two new children's theatres are opening at the NNUH and and there are plans for a new orthopaedic centre.
New cancer centre
The NNUH has been running weekend clinics to get through the backlog of breast cancer referrals. New figures released yesterday show only one percent of women with suspected breast cancer were seen within the target two-week window in August, similarly to in July as we reported this week, but the hospital expects October’s figures to be much better.
However only 51pc of NNUH patients with cancer started treatment within two months, against a national average of 70pc and a target of 85pc. There is no excuse for doing so much worse than other hospitals.
But there is some good news: The James Paget hospital has opened a new service to streamline diagnoses and has a new urology suite, and a new Macmillan-funded cancer treatment centre opened yesterday in Cromer.
Staff welfare and recruitment
GPs are angry and feel scapegoated, paramedics are on their knees with exhaustion and nurses and carers are leaving the profession.
NHS data shows huge vacancies across the country. There are currently 9,418 vacancies in the NHS in the East of England and 93,806 nationwide.
That is equivalent to 7.7 per cent of the East of England workforce.
The region needs 3,197 nurses, a bigger shortfall than recent quarters but lower than in 2018 or 2019.
The biggest gap is in mental health nurses, which has a 17 per cent vacancy rate meaning almost one in five nursing posts currently unfilled.
A spokesman for Norfolk's NHS praised staff, but it is unclear how all these vacancies will be filled.
We will get more dentists - next year
Finally, when it comes to dentistry, this is now one of the most complained about areas of the health service.
NHS England is bringing in new dental services for Norfolk and Suffolk, due to be running in summer next year and will be open from 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year including all Bank Holidays.
They will also provide dental care services to vulnerable people in the local area, including homeless people, asylum seekers and those that do not have recourse to public funds.
Is it all a question of funding?
Yes and no. In 2017, the latest year for which comparable data is available from the ONS, the UK spent £2,989 per person on healthcare, which the second-lowest among the G7, significantly behind France (£3,737), Germany (£4,432) and the United States (£7,736).
The NHS contributes to the UK having one of the highest shares of publicly funded healthcare (79%) in the OECD.
In 2017, the UK spent the equivalent of £560 per person on health-related long-term care, which was less than most other northern or western European countries, but a similar amount to France (£569) and Canada (£556)
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