The future of the NHS
One of the key issues facing the new Government is the state of the NHS. Having been involved in local health and social care scrutiny over the past 8 years, I have seen the decline in services in real time and have watched as local organisations desperately try to fix what are inherently national problems.
Last week Lord Darzi released his report on the state of the NHS and I listened in Parliament to the Government’s response. Over the years, I have spoken with hundreds of constituents who have told me about waiting overnight in A&E, or spending months and months in pain waiting for an operation. I’ve also listened to NHS staff who are frustrated that they can’t give patients the level of care they deserve.
The Darzi report sets out in stark terms that the NHS is in critical condition. Patients are being failed on a daily basis with record waits for appointments and access to life-saving treatment delayed. Our public services are also too focused on treatment and not enough on preventing ill health in the first place.
The outcome of this is inevitable – we have worse cancer survival rates than Europe and both children and adults are less healthy overall than they were a decade ago.
The report identified the four big causes of this situation: 1) underinvestment in technology, with the NHS 15 years behind the private sector 2) the disastrous 2012 top-down reorganisation of the NHS, the effects of which are still being felt today 3) the Covid pandemic, which hit the NHS harder than any other comparable healthcare system and 4) failure to reform, which means money is not being spent in the right places and has been wasted.
In Parliament I listened to the Health Secretary set out how we will tackle the NHS crisis and get our health service back on its feet. The Health Secretary confirmed that we will never go away from the NHS being free at the point of need because we believe strongly that whenever you fall ill, you should never have to worry about the bill.
Early next year the Government will be publishing a ten year plan, which will set out how we fundamentally reform the NHS and deliver three big shifts to build a health service fit for the future: 1) moving from hospital to community by building a Neighbourhood Health Service around patients, where they are, to help catch illness early 2) moving from analogue to digital, giving patients real choice and control through the NHS App, and realising the enormous potential of the NHS to partner with tech and life sciences to put NHS patients at the front of the queue for new treatments and medicines and 3) move from treating sickness to preventing illness because prevention is better than cure.
It is only with these fundamental shifts in how the NHS operates that we can truly get it back on its feet and get the nation back to full health.