Since the nineteen fifties the NHS has suffered from political interference involving continuous re-organisations, which before they are bedded in, are replaced with another. An absurd culture of targets, which has created a large bureaucratic industry in the NHS, coupled with a disjoint between the various arms of treatment, have inhibited the performance of a fundamentally sound organisation. There is also much too much pass the parcel, in this case the patient, theology in the mindset of the thinkers. Yet when an emergency occurs in the community, requiring all hands to the pump and the abandonment of process and demarcation lines, the system performs to astonishing levels of achievement. If it were ramshackle at its core it would, in such an emergency, collapse altogether.
So it is heartening and refreshing to learn of the Five Year Plan today published by NHS England by its new Chief Executive, in collaboration with five other agencies appointed by various governments to meddle in healthcare. It foresees the breakdown of barriers between doctor, hospital, pharmacy, home care and patients themselves, to produce a comprehensive and seamless service adapted to local needs. This is a plan produced by the health service itself and not by politicians whose ruinous interference has hobbled it for decades and wasted untold £ billions.
No plan for anything is perfect, nor is its outcome ever quite as expected, but this plan for our health service deserves universal support.
