CAN the government end "corridor care" at the same time as slashing hospital budgets? That's what Ministers believes. And that was a key question West Cornwall Healthwatch's excellent and well attended public meeting at the weekend wanted answers to.

Speakers included local doctors, who’re charged with delivering the government's policy. I offered my own critique on the government's approach and some history.

The government's "Ten-Year Health Plan" proposed three unarguable key "shifts". From:

1. "Sickness to Prevention"

2. "Hospital to Community"

3. "Analogue to Digital"

Presenting agreeable slogans is one thing (after all who would instead propose there should be a shift from "Prevention to Sickness" etc!?). However, delivering is another.

The "shift" from "Hospital to Community" has been quietly going on for many years before the 2025-35 Plan. I showed the NHS Confederation published plans twenty years ago entitled "Why we need fewer hospital beds". Managing a system so it needs fewer hospital beds is one thing. But cutting hospital beds without knowing how the system will cope would be (and was!) unwise. That's what I warned then. But NHS chiefs quietly carried on with the policy anyway, irrespective of the scepticism expressed by many, including me.

There were 145,128 Acute Hospital beds in 2004/05. By last year they had been slashed to 114,000, even though patient need has increased. If the NHS had sufficiently improved preventative medicine and hospitals had found a way of sufficiently speeding safe patient discharge such that fewer hospital beds were needed, the policy would be a success. But the widespread reporting of 20-plus ambulance queues, followed by shocking levels of "corridor care" and overwhelming stress throughout the hospital system, suggests, as I pointed out, the fine theory should be confronted with the uncomfortable truth that these policies have been failing.

Though I quite understand NHS chiefs are obliged to press on with the policy of slashing hospital budgets while promising to improve the ability of our GPs, community health systems and voluntary sector to relieve the pressure on our hospitals, reality suggests otherwise.

NHS safety regulator - NICE - advises that for a hospital to safely manage patient flow and pressures it should have a bed occupancy level of no more than 85 per cent. But in most acute hospitals it is far higher. At Treliske (Truro) it is often above 95 per cent! Some wards over 100 per cent! Across England and Wales there's an average of 2.4 beds per thousand people. In Cornwall it’s just 1.9. The EU average is 4.6; where most countries resource hospitals to ensure they cope with the ebb and flow of patient emergencies and demand.

I’m pressing government ministers and local NHS managers to face up to these realities. To ensure our hospitals are stabilised while the ability of our GPs, community nurse teams and primary care services is enhanced. Once that is achieved, of course the "shift" can be advanced. But not before.