Ten year plan for the NHS aims to “hand power back to the patients”
Government publish their new handbook setting out future plans for the NHS.
The government has published a new 10 Year Health Plan for England that could change how people living with diabetes receive treatment as it promises to “seize the opportunities provided by new technologies, medicines, and innovations to deliver better care for all patients”.
The 168-page document outlines three big changes to the operation of the NHS that it says will improve care for all “wherever they live and whatever they earn – and better value for taxpayers”.
The report pledges to make more care available on people’s doorsteps and in their homes; new technology to liberate staff from admin and allow people to manage their care as easily as they bank or shop online; and to reach patients earlier and make healthy and easy choices.
The plan comes in response to Lord Darzi's independent report on the state of the National Health Service in England, that found “many cannot get a GP or dental appointment; waiting lists for hospital and community care have ballooned; staff are demoralised and demotivated; and outcomes on major killers like cancer lag behind other countries”.
Announcing the plans, Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, said: “In 1948 a Labour government founded the NHS. My job now is to make it fit for the future. Our 10-year plan, backed by an extra £29 billion, will transform the service through AI and neighbourhood care – and hand power back to patients. This government rejects the pessimistic view that universal healthcare could be afforded in the 20th century but not in the 21st. So does the public. But unless the NHS changes, the argument that it is unsustainable will grow more compelling. It really is change or bust. We choose change.
“I am sometimes told that NHS staff are resistant to change. In my experience, they’re crying out for it. They have suffered the moral injury of turning up to work, slogging their guts out, only to leave at the end of the day feeling exhausted and demoralised by the conditions that patients are being treated in because of circumstances beyond their control.
“I spoke to a nurse in a community clinic who told me she spends more time filling out forms than seeing patients. That’s not why she joined the NHS. We need to free up our staff to do what they do best – care. They’re the ones driving innovation on the frontline, and their fingerprints are all over this plan.
“This plan will give people real choices, faster responses and a say in how their care is delivered and where. It will fulfil Nye Bevan’s commitment in 1948 that the NHS would put a “megaphone in the mouth” of every patient, and make sure that the advantages enjoyed by the privileged few were available to all.
“We know the British people are counting on us to make sure that the NHS not only survives, but thrives. We are determined not to let them down.
“That’s the plan – now it falls to us and the 1.5 million people working in the NHS to deliver it. It won’t be easy, but nothing could be more worthwhile. If we succeed, we will be able to say with pride, echoed through the remaining decades of this century, that we were the generation that built an NHS fit for the future and a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.”
In a summary introducing the plan a statement read: “The choice for the NHS is stark: reform or die. We can continue down our current path, making tweaks to an increasingly unsustainable model - or we can take a new course and reimagine the NHS through transformational change that will guarantee its sustainability for generations to come. This plan chooses the latter. It represents a break with the past.
“That choice has been informed by the biggest conversation about the NHS in its history. Over the past 8 months, we have spoken to thousands of staff and members of the public and considered the 250,000 ideas submitted to our Change NHS website. The conclusion was clear: no one defends the status quo. Staff and patients are crying out for change.
“This is a plan to create a new model of care, fit for the future. It will be central to how we deliver on our health mission. We will take the NHS’s founding principles - universal care, free at the point of delivery, based on need and funded through general taxation - and from those foundations, entirely reimagine how the NHS does care so patients have real choice and control over their health and care.
“Science and technology will be key to that reinvention. Today the NHS is behind the technological curve. This plan propels it to the front. The NHS of the future will be a service that offers instant access to help and appointments. One that predicts and prevents ill health rather than simply diagnosing and treating it. A patient-controlled system, in place of today’s centralised state bureaucracy - and one where frontline staff are empowered to reshape services. A service with the core principles and values of the NHS but with the know-how of a wider network of technology, life sciences, local government, civil society and third sector organisations, working in partnership to improve the nation’s health.
“It will be a service equipped to narrow health inequalities. Evidence shows that people in working class jobs, who are from ethnic minority backgrounds, who live in rural or coastal areas or deindustrialised inner cities, who have experienced domestic violence or who are homeless are more likely to experience worse NHS access, worse outcomes and to die younger. This is an intolerable injustice. Our reimagined NHS will be designed to tackle inequalities in both access and outcomes - as well as to give everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, the means to engage with the NHS on their own terms.
“Despite the scale of the challenge we face, there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism. The NHS is the best placed system in the world to harness the advances we are seeing in artificial intelligence (AI) and genomic science. This plan describes how we will use these advantages to propel the NHS into a position of global leadership. When coupled with our country’s excellence in science, innovation and academia, the UK can lead the world in developing the treatments and technologies of the future.
“This plan will put the NHS at the front of the global genomics revolution and make the NHS the most AI-enabled care system in the world. We will get upstream of ill health and make a reality of precision medicine. We will put the NHS on a sustainable footing by adopting a new value-based approach, that aligns resources to achieve better health outcomes. In turn, we will unlock broader economic benefits for the UK, helping to get people back into work and providing a bedrock for the industries of the future. This is a plan to transform the NHS into an engine for economic growth, rather than simply a beneficiary of it.”
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