Britain’s Prime Minister has vowed to draw up a new 10-year plan for the country’s National Health Service (NHS), after a damning report indicating that it is in a “critical condition”.
However, said Sir Keir Starmer, there would be no extra funding without reform.
The new plan, expected to be published early next year, would be the “the biggest reimagining of the NHS” since it was formed, reports the BBC, and will focus on three major areas for reform: the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.
The report was the result of a nine-week review by the independent peer and NHS surgeon Lord Darzi, who had been asked to identify the failings in the health service. However, his remit did not extend to devising solutions.
The findings by Darzi, who served as Health Minister in the last Labour Government, and is professor of surgery and department head at Imperial College, London, present a stark picture of a service he says is in “serious trouble”, with declining productivity, “ballooning” waits and “awful” emergency services that risk patients’ lives.
Responding to the report, the Prime Minister said the problems would not be solved by just more money.
“We can’t avoid long-term change. This isn’t just going to be solved by more money, it’s solved by reform.”
The reform would mean changing the existing model into a neighbourhood health service”, which would include “more tests, scans and healthcare offered on high streets and town centres” , alongside bringing back the family doctor and offering digital consultations to those who want them.
National mission
Health Secretary Wes Streeting pledged to be “tough on ill-health” and its causes, and outlined a “national mission” to improve health opportunities countrywide.
He said he wants to be “honest about the problems” facing the NHS and be “serious about fixing them”.
He described the Darzi report as “raw, honest and breathtaking”.
The report said the NHS was still struggling with the aftershocks of the pandemic and falling well short of its key targets for cancer, Accident & Emergency (A&E) and hospital treatment.
It said this was contributing to poor survival rates in cancer and heart disease, and declining rates of satisfaction with the service.
The NHS, it added, had been left chronically weakened by the policy of austerity of the 2010s and, in particular, a lack of investment in buildings and technology.
It is typified by crumbling hospitals and fewer scanners than many other developed nations, and was years behind the private sector in terms of digital innovation.
This contributed to falling levels of productivity in hospitals, with rises in staff outstripped by increasing numbers of patients needing care.
This means hospitals have been sucking up an ever-increasing amount of the budget, when more care should be shifted into the community.
The report also damned the “disastrous” 2012 reforms introduced by the coalition government, which led to a shake-up of management structure in the NHS and acted as a distraction for the rest of the decade.
This all contributed to the NHS entering the pandemic in a depleted state, leading to the cancellation of more hospital treatments than any comparable country and the “ballooning” waiting list, which currently stands at 7.6m.
Meanwhile, a surge in patients with long-term illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and respiratory illness, was threatening to overwhelm the NHS, alongside soaring levels of mental health problems among young people.
Lord Darzi said: “Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation – not just in the health service, but in the state of the nation’s health.”
Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the government had yet to come up with meaningful plans for reform.
“The Labour Government will be judged on its actions. It has stopped new hospitals from being built, scrapped our social care reforms and taken money from pensioners to fund unsustainable pay rises, with no gains in productivity.”
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BBC article – No extra NHS funding without reform, says PM (Open access)
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