Covid-19: NHS is struggling to treat more patients than before pandemic despite more staff and funding, finds analysis

Covid-19 may have dealt a “lasting adverse hit” to NHS performance rather than a short lived one-off shock, leading economists have said.The Institute for Fiscal Studies said its analysis showed that the NHS was struggling to treat more patients than it was before the pandemic despite having more staff and more funding, a seeming fall in performance and output that it described as a “puzzle.”1In its report the institute said that there were signs that patients were generally sicker than before the pandemic and in need of more complex treatment but also other contributing and interacting factors that would need further data to unravel.There were fewer hospital beds available for patients without covid-19 than before the pandemic and a continuing struggle to discharge patients into the community or social care, further clogging up the system and acting as a drain on staff resources, it said. “More generally, there are worrying…
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