The government is putting an extra £140m into urgent care in England, the health secretary, Yvette Cooper, has announced, warning that the NHS faces a harder winter than usual.
The money is split across 14 schemes, covering new urgent care centres, additional ambulances and improvements to emergency departments. Cooper said the health service had been planning for winter since July. The summer's extreme heat already pushed A&E attendance to a record of almost 7.3 million between June and August, and NHS leaders have reported early signs of a busy flu season.
NHS England urged eligible people to get vaccinated. The Royal College of Nursing welcomed the funding as a short-term measure but said it would not fix staff shortages, and called for longer-term investment in the forthcoming budget, The Guardian reported.
Source: The Guardian
