Standards have got considerably worse in many measures recently.
When people talk about the winter crisis it's differently to previous winter crises -- A&Es turning away ambos because the corridors are full isn't something that used to happen.
In the past Ambos have been turned away, but that's because the beds were full. Those A&Es still had emergency capacity (in the corridors).
Before this an A&E would tell an Ambo that the beds are full, and to go to a different hospital.
This leaves some spare in the system for when things are very busy - you put people in corridors.
But now all the corridors are full. We've had A&Es declare major incidents.
We've even seen, and I don't think we've seen it before, triage on resus. That alone is a big flag that things are fucked.
> And before this, what? Ambos queuing up, patients treated in ambos, patients waiting a long time for ambos, etc, et
Right, you think we'll go from fully working NHS to fully broken NHS in the blink of an eye. These things you mention were fixed once, and they've been getting steadily worse (as the Conservatives de-funded social care, and privatised drug & alcohol services, and cut MH services, and defunded the rest of the NHS) - the crisis started a few years ago, and is building year on year.
They haven't destroyed the NHS since the NHS still exists.
However, this aside, do you have any ideas regarding turning around this perceived calamity?
Personally, I think the solution is politically unpalatable but I am not so narrow minded as to think there may be a solution that doesn't simply resort to giving doctors and nurses a bonanza pay rise.
'In decline' maybe? The NHS has been in some crisis or another for all of these years.