Health Matters
No extra NHS funding without reform, says PM
News
Sep 12th, 2024

eThere will be no extra NHS funding without reform, Sir Keir Starmer says, as he promised to draw up a new 10-year plan for the health service.

The pledge came after a damning report warned the NHS in England was in a "critical condition".

The prime minister said the new plan, expected to be published in the spring, would be the "the biggest re-imagining of the NHS" since it was formed.

He set out three key areas for reform - the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.

But the Conservatives said the government needed to turn "rhetoric to action" after scrapping its plans to reform social care and build new hospitals.

 

The report, external was the result of a nine-week review by the independent peer and NHS surgeon Lord Darzi.

He was asked by Labour, shortly after the election, to identify the failings in the health service, but his remit did not stretch to coming up with solutions.

His findings present a stark picture of a service which he says is in "serious trouble" with declining productivity, "ballooning" waits and "awful" emergency services that put patients at risk.

1 Comments:
Dr Paul Crawford Walker
As someone who worked in the NHS and local government over the period 1965 to 2005 I have been aware of the need for reform of the social care system for half a century – never more so than when I was one of the then new breed of District General Managers in the 1980's. During my time as a District General Manager I won a fellowship to study social care in Northern Ireland where health and social care were managed and funded by the same area boards. Interestingly this management arrangement did not seem to have made any difference to the ease with which social care needs could be arranged to both prevent the need for hospital admission or to expedite hospital discharge. So there clearly is a more fundamental problem which I cannot believe has not been identified or is intractable. So it is now up to the new Labour administration to seize the moment to deal with something that previous administrations have seen as a problem but shied away from the solution.
Leave a Comment
* Name
* Email (will not be published)
Enter Your Comment
* - Required fields
 
Site Copyright HealthMatters 
Site Created by Point Design & Galatai Ltd.