The NHS needs structural change, not more tax-payer’s money
If the NHS is struggling this much, then there is more than just a staff issue; instead there is an administrative and structural issue.
We’re back to where we were. The lockdown sceptics, and many backbench Tories, said this would happen. Winter arrives and, before we’d even got a full picture, the NHS and the British medical lobby sent out a loud call for restrictions to be put back in place due to Covid pressure – pressure notably less than where we found ourselves last year. The NHS big wigs are right about one thing though, the NHS can’t cope full stop.
We saw it struggle during the height of the pandemic, but the aftereffects are where things are most dire. BMA surveys and real figures illustrate a concerning number of nurses and doctors leaving the profession when they are needed most. Waiting lists are so incredibly high that our health service has, in figurative terms, collapsed because it can no longer provide the care so many patients desperately need. It’s a bloated administrative debacle.
More and more operations are put off as hospitals continue to be in a dire state despite the pressure from Covid being less than it was. In my home city, GP surgeries are also struggling. The communication between the GPs and hospitals is an administrative nightmare, where no one seems to have a good picture of patient needs and who needs to go where.
To me, this is indicative a wider structural problem. If the NHS is struggling this much, then there is more than just a staff issue; instead there is an administrative and structural issue. To address this, the conversation must firstly change. That hurdle will be hard to reach. The narrative that the NHS must indefinitely impose restrictions every winter has gone unchallenged by the media commentariat, allowing the public to be hoodwinked into feeling sympathy for a broken system.
In measures of equity and fairness, the UK rates highly compared to other nations due to the free at point of use model- a model that the British public favours heavily. However, in healthcare performance it is far from the best. Serious questions must be asked as to how much responsibility of care the public system can deal with; increasing populations and the increasing costs of managing our healthcare are worsening the already existing problems. It is, in a sense, becoming a blackhole of tax-payer’s money (the ‘health and social care levy’ being the latest example). Indeed, over forty per cent of public spending is consumed by the NHS- a figure that if forecast to rise.
It may be that, where possible, private care should take a more central role if it is affordable to the patient. That is just one of many solutions, but whatever the answer is, it cannot be to simply fund our health service even more. The NHS needs structural change.
