Commenting on statements from NHS England’s medical director Sir Bruce Keogh in today’s Guardian, RCP president Professor Jane Dacre said:
The RCP agrees with Sir Bruce that the NHS will not be able to cope in future due to an ageing population with greater health needs, in fact we had already identified this in our 2012 report Hospitals on the Edge, which outlined the increasing strain on the NHS.
Our radical 2013 report Future Hospital: Caring for Medical Patients recommended many solutions which are being put in place in some UK hospitals already, and match some of the suggestions in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View. As physicians make up the largest group of doctors in any general hospital, it is vital that we are involved in reorganising and reconfiguring services around the needs of the patient.