SIR – Like many health consumers who haved trawled the ‘Google school of medicine’, I can appreciate the warnings of the Royal College of Physicians that in some places acute care is on the verge of collapse.

The discovery of many new conditions and refined and new high-tech treatments alongside an expanding and ageing population has caused demand to outstrip supply.

This has not been helped either by ailments caused by obesity and alcohol which has significantly contributed to the statistical picture.

In Worcester the strain today is often obvious to anyone attending an appointment.

The Royal College says action is needed now to provide the care that people deserve.

One of the biggest and most alarming concerns is a lack of expert services available seven days a week.

It surely means a patient’s outcome could well be prejudiced if they are admitted at the weekend.

One in 10 consultants say they wouldn’t recommend their own families have care in their hospital.

Surely, given the fact that we remain a wealthy nation and with people subject to very high taxes, we should expect better than this.

Health trust managers and chief executives tend to be very well renumerated and so are many consultants, who, in effect, use their NHSprovided training to advance their private practice, often seeing patients who felt that the long wait for an NHS appointment was intolerable.

When it comes to it, the Government doles out a fortune on criminal justice and benefits and tax credits or engages in what increasingly seem to have been costly military campaigns overseas, so why can’t we fund the NHS sufficiently to provide dependably safe and dignified conditions to the public when they are at their most vulnerable with acute illness.

ANDREW BROWN

Worcester