Top doctor says 'the NHS as we know it will not survive much longer' because 5.3-million-strong waiting list means the health service 'continues quietly to disintegrate' 

• Doctor Rachel Clarke warned of a 'silent epidemic of suffering' within the NHS 
• The best-selling author said the health service is drifting into a 'two-tier' system
• Dr Clarke said many issues stem from 2010 and cannot be blamed on pandemic 

The NHS is 'quietly disintegrating' under the pressure of a 5.3 million-strong waiting list, a palliative care doctor has warned. 

According to Rachel Clarke, there is currently a 'silent epidemic of unseen, unheard suffering' in the health system 'like nothing we have known before.' 

The Oxfordshire-based doctor, 48, sounded the alarm in an article today in which she recounted the tragic story of a paramedic whose frail octogenarian mother was repeatedly sent home as doctors missed that she needed palliative care. 

Dr Clarke, who has written three best-selling books related to healthcare in Britain -including one on the Covid-19 pandemic - described the woman's misdiagnosis as 'monstrous'.

She wrote in the Sunday Times: 'Every aspect of this story was monstrous, and similarly monstrous acts are occurring up and down the country as you read this. 

'There is a silent epidemic of unseen, unheard suffering in the NHS today, like nothing we have known before. 

'Eyes glaze over, journalists roll their eyes and prime ministers tell their aides they don’t “buy all this ‘NHS overwhelmed’ stuff”. Yet the health service continues quietly to disintegrate.'

Dr Clarke, who works at the Horton Hospital, in Banbury, urged the public to consider the 5.3 million people currently on the NHS waiting list - of whom thousands have been awaiting surgery for more than two years. 

'Imagine enduring for that length of time the pain and disability of osteoarthritis of your knee or hip so severe that bare bone is grating on bone,' she added, 'Or of going blind before you ever get your cataract surgery.

'Or of dying at home, alone, from a heart attack because the 999 waits are more than an hour.'

The palliative doctor said there should be no place for 'blind optimism' and 'wishful thinking' when it comes to the running of the NHS. 

Her diagnosis is that the UK's world-renowned health system is in fact 'closer to terminal than thriving'. 

She added: 'This summer many A&E departments are reporting their most intense workloads on record. 

'Our performance on cancer, already poor by international standards, has collapsed after 18 months of Covid. 

'Mental health services, for all the warm words about parity, remain desperately overstretched, particularly for children.'

Dr Clarke went on to praise the level of public support for the NHS, including the millions raised for charities and acts of kindness which 'reduced me to tears.' 

But, she said, the time has come to 'separate sentiment from reason' if the problems plaguing the health service are to be acknowledged and addressed. 

The doctor suggests shying away from a narrative which blames the current conditions on the pandemic. 

'Since 2010, waiting times have risen and NHS performance declined,' she added, 'We entered the pandemic with one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds, intensive care beds and doctors, proportionally, of any country in Europe. 

'The terminal trajectory long preceded Covid.' 

According to Dr Clarke, there is now a 'rock-bottom morale' among NHS staff which will 'never recover' unless they are given the resources to meet current demand. 

'A world-class health service cannot be sustained by claps alone,' she said.

Dr Clarke added: 'It is no exaggeration to say I do not know a single doctor or nurse who believes that the NHS as we know it will survive much longer.'

She said that the NHS is shifting into a 'two-tier system' in which a limited number of core and emergency services remain while the rest is 'rationed to oblivion unless you can pay'.   

She added: 'Only someone lucky enough not to be, or to know, a patient can’t see it. The only question is how much we care.'