Rishi Sunak will hold emergency talks with NHS and care leaders to try to tackle the UK’s winter health crisis.
The UK Prime Minister will host the NHS Recovery Forum at No 10 on Saturday. Talks will focus on four key themes: social care and deferred discharge, urgent and urgent care, elective care and primary care.
A Downing Street spokesman said the aim was to “help share knowledge and practical solutions so we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as late discharge and emergency care”.
But Sunak has been warned that the rare weekend meeting is unlikely to reverse the fortunes of the NHS.
Labor said patients deserved more than a “talking shop” and the Liberal Democrats said it was “too little, too late”.
Senior doctors say the NHS is on edge, with many A&E units struggling to keep up with demand and trusts and ambulance services declaring critical incidents.
Discharge rates fell to a new low in England last week, with only a third of those patients ready to be discharged from hospital going ahead.
The meeting also comes amid an ongoing strike by nursing and ambulance workers over pay and conditions.
Health unions have been invited to meet health secretary Steve Barclay on Monday to discuss pay for 2023-24 from April, but unions say it will not prevent further strike action planned for January
The forum is expected to last much of Saturday and will be attended by Barclay, Treasury Secretary John Glen, Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said there were no “silver bullets” to solve the crisis in hospitals and other care.
“This crisis has been a decade or more in the making and now we are paying the high price for years of inaction and managed decline,” he said. “Patients are experiencing delays that we haven’t seen in years.
“High levels of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and rising levels of Covid are exacerbating the problem, but the cause is decades of underinvestment in staff, capital and the lack of a long-term solution for the capacity crisis facing social care.”.
As well as ministers, attendees will include chief executives and clinical leaders from NHS organisations, local areas and councils across the country.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “As the Prime Minister made clear this week, easing the immediate pressures while also focusing on the long-term improvement of the NHS is one of her key promises.
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“That’s why we’re bringing together the best minds in the health and care sectors to help share knowledge and practical solutions so we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as late discharge and emergency care.
“We want to fix the unjustified variation in NHS performance between local areas, because no matter where you live, you should be able to access quality health care.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting described the meeting as “talking shop”. He said: “After 13 years of NHS mismanagement, this is the equivalent of arsonists convening a forum with firefighters to put out the inferno they started. Patients deserve more than a talking shop.
“Clinical leaders and health experts have been sounding the alarm for months about the crisis facing the NHS, so why has it taken so long for Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay to decide to listen?”
Mr Streeting said the £500m for backlogs promised by the government had “still not reached the frontline and it is now too late to make a difference this winter”.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the meeting was “too little, too late”.
“Hundreds of people have been dying needlessly every week in the worst NHS crisis this country has ever seen, while the Prime Minister sits on his hands,” he said.