Healthcare delivery
Identifying top priorities for the NHS
The next Government will be tasked with tackling the major challenges faced by the NHS – from staff shortages, strikes over pay and huge waiting lists, to increasing demand from an ageing and increasingly obese population, health inequalities, and a crisis in social care. Recent major reports have outlined the priorities for future leaders. CSJ provides an overview of their key findings.
A number of major reports from healthcare thought leaders have sought to identify some of the top priorities for tackling the challenges facing the NHS. Among the top priorities for healthcare leaders is the need to increase funding to repair dilapidated buildings, invest in cutting-edge technology, drive down long waiting lists, refocus on preventative health strategies, write off student loans for doctors, nurses and midwives, and to make care closer to home a reality. This article looks at some of the key findings. What is clear, from these reports, is that major investment in staff, buildings and technology is urgently needed.
Building the health of the nation The NHS Confederation’s report, Building the health of the nation: priorities for a new government, sets out what health and care leaders want the next government to prioritise as services grapple with rising demand and
a decade of underinvestment.1 Based on
extensive engagement with its networks, the NHS Confederation has identified the five most critical factors that its members have said will help to secure the future of the service in a general election year. These are to: 1. Put the NHS on a more sustainable footing, with no top-down structural reform in England for the next parliament, and to commit to a short-term stabilisation plan during the first 12 months of a new parliament to help get performance in the English NHS back on track.
2. Increase NHS capital spending and reform how the capital regime operates. Specifically in England, capital funding needs to increase to at least £14.1 billion annually, a £6.4 billion increase from the current level of £7.7 billion.
3. Commit to fund and deliver the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan for England, alongside an equivalent plan for social care. 4. Provide more care closer to home
by enabling local health systems to proportionately increase investment into primary care and community-based services, mental health and social care.
5. Deliver a strategy for national health, given that most policy that impacts people’s health is made outside the NHS. As part of this, the Prime Minister should lead a cross- government national mission for health improvement to shift the focus from treating illness to promoting health and wellbeing, reducing inequalities and tackling the wider determinants of health, and supporting the public to be active partners in their own health.
For most people, being treated at or as close to home as possible is what is best for their health and how they want to be cared for. It is also most efficient and cost-effective for the NHS. The report states that political focus and resources must shift to ensuring more people can access care closer to home in their local community and at an earlier stage of illness, with more continuity of care, rather than be left waiting until their health needs require hospital treatment. Health and care leaders want to see
increasing investment upstream into primary care and community-based services, mental health and social care. The evidence is clear that investing in primary and community care results in lower demand in hospital and emergency care. The NHS Confederation points out that for every £1 invested in the NHS, the economy gets £4 back in gross value added (GVA). However, the greatest economic returns come from investing in primary and community care – according to the NHS Confederation’s analysis, £14 added is to the economy for every £1 invested. Commenting on the publication of this report,
which has been shared with the main political parties, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “There is no shortage of analysis and advice about what the NHS needs.
24
www.clinicalservicesjournal.com I April 2024
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
