We know what the recommendations are of the Review. We do not know for sure what the Government’s official response is until later. Until then this Blog will not give a considered response. We do, however lay out the standards of judgement we shall employ.
The prime element of the NHS, the key person and the core of the whole thing is the patient. Next comes the patient’s doctor. We call this doctor the GP. Upon the relationship between these two and their assessment of need, whether treatment, surgery, diagnosis, or support, everything else as well as everybody else, must derive. Always all these other events, people and combinations, must work from and back to the patient and the personal doctor. Only then can you have a user friendly service which delivers an effective outcome.
At present this is not the case. GPs are self employed and under contract to the government. At a very early stage of diagnosis they pass the patient into a process which begins with a hospital clinic with whom there is sparse communication. The clinic decides on the treatment, when and by whom. Its doctors are full time employees of the NHS but the most senior ones are allowed to moonlight up the road at private hospitals making lots of money while their NHS waiting lists grow. Hospitals are getting bigger, more specialist and more expensive and, crucially further apart. This means that they are further away from patients and their families. The outcome is over burdened clinics, long waiting times for everything, fragmented after care, a shortage of critical health professionals such as midwives and home carers and a generally poor outcome form the biggest employer in the world after the Chinese army, with over £100billion of your money gobbled up each year.
Anyone who cannot see the need for change is just not facing reality.