Tackling NHS waiting times and delivering better local healthcare is something that I know is so important to constituents in Hitchin, Harpenden and the villages. On Friday I visited the Luton & Dunstable Hospital which serves local residents to meet NHS staff there and hear about some of the challenges that they face locally.
I also visited the Lister Hospital, meeting with senior clinicians, hospital management, and the CEO of East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust; in addition to spending time in A&E, seeing how the hospital functions day-to-day. I am still processing the many lessons that I learned, but there are some immediate takeaways.
First, it is clear that we need more capacity in the system to deal with both short term and long-term pressures.
Second, despite our efforts in increasing the number of doctors by 14% and the number of nurses by 11% over the last three years, morale is not as high as anybody would like it to be. We must redouble our efforts to engage closely with the NHS workforce, ensuring that policy remains in line with the feeling on the front line.
Alongside all of this, I will continue my work to increase the number of available GPs and to improve access to GP services, an issue that matters to everybody in our community.
