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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2018/jun/27/theresa-may-wrong-cash-boost-nhs
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| Theresa May got it wrong with her cash boost for the NHS. Here's why | Theresa May got it wrong with her cash boost for the NHS. Here's why |
| (5 days later) | |
| Four key things were missing from Theresa May’s announcement of extra money for the NHS. | Four key things were missing from Theresa May’s announcement of extra money for the NHS. |
| There was no admission that there is an NHS crisis that needs tackling. Or that money is needed now for both the the health service and social care. Without this emergency cash injection, there will be insufficient time and resource to make the necessary preparations to avoid a repeat – or indeed worsening – of last year’s winter crisis in the NHS and social care with the trail of waits, delays, suffering and extra deaths that accompanied it. | There was no admission that there is an NHS crisis that needs tackling. Or that money is needed now for both the the health service and social care. Without this emergency cash injection, there will be insufficient time and resource to make the necessary preparations to avoid a repeat – or indeed worsening – of last year’s winter crisis in the NHS and social care with the trail of waits, delays, suffering and extra deaths that accompanied it. |
| There was no apology, no acknowledgement that the NHS and social care are in crisis because their needs have not been recognised or met by central government for some years. The result: a year-on–year increase in the shortfall of service provision compared with demand. This accumulating – and now gaping – shortfall has made the NHS more inefficient, by forcing it to manage on a hand-to-mouth basis. This accumulating inefficiency is the government’s doing and responsibility. The biggest inefficiency of this sort is the lack of care and nursing home beds and community support, leaving thousands of people in hospital who don’t need to be there and who are not best treated there. The cost is in the billions. | There was no apology, no acknowledgement that the NHS and social care are in crisis because their needs have not been recognised or met by central government for some years. The result: a year-on–year increase in the shortfall of service provision compared with demand. This accumulating – and now gaping – shortfall has made the NHS more inefficient, by forcing it to manage on a hand-to-mouth basis. This accumulating inefficiency is the government’s doing and responsibility. The biggest inefficiency of this sort is the lack of care and nursing home beds and community support, leaving thousands of people in hospital who don’t need to be there and who are not best treated there. The cost is in the billions. |
| The prime minister got the wrong story. She suggested that what the NHS needed to do was come up with a plan to spend the money well from April 2019 at the earliest to improve the NHS. Someone – whether in the NHS or government – needs to work out just how short it is of the staff, capacity, buildings and services it needs to be able to meet demand safely and effectively, and then commit the resources to put that right immediately. It also needs to remove the huge weight of historic indebtedness that has been built up by year upon year of underfunding of trusts around the country are to be able to focus on patients’ needs. | The prime minister got the wrong story. She suggested that what the NHS needed to do was come up with a plan to spend the money well from April 2019 at the earliest to improve the NHS. Someone – whether in the NHS or government – needs to work out just how short it is of the staff, capacity, buildings and services it needs to be able to meet demand safely and effectively, and then commit the resources to put that right immediately. It also needs to remove the huge weight of historic indebtedness that has been built up by year upon year of underfunding of trusts around the country are to be able to focus on patients’ needs. |
| Once that resource has been committed, only then will it be time to see how much of the promised £20bn is left and what the priorities for spending it should be. Please can the prime minister ensure the government avoids making the same old mistakes? None of the usual suspects, please, frittering precious resources on vanity projects that ignore what is really possible across the NHS and rehashing the now largely failed and irrelevant five-year NHS plan. It never had significant sign-up in the NHS and was itself a rehash of earlier failed, unrealistic versions of healthcare panaceas. | Once that resource has been committed, only then will it be time to see how much of the promised £20bn is left and what the priorities for spending it should be. Please can the prime minister ensure the government avoids making the same old mistakes? None of the usual suspects, please, frittering precious resources on vanity projects that ignore what is really possible across the NHS and rehashing the now largely failed and irrelevant five-year NHS plan. It never had significant sign-up in the NHS and was itself a rehash of earlier failed, unrealistic versions of healthcare panaceas. |
| May should have committed to dismantling the Lansley reforms, which have scattered responsibility, set up pointless but wasteful conflicts between NHS organisations, and created a large and costly layer of commissioner bureaucracy, which subtracts rather than adds value to the NHS. | May should have committed to dismantling the Lansley reforms, which have scattered responsibility, set up pointless but wasteful conflicts between NHS organisations, and created a large and costly layer of commissioner bureaucracy, which subtracts rather than adds value to the NHS. |
| If only she had said all that and finished with: “I am sorry. I got it wrong.” Then we could really have applauded her. | If only she had said all that and finished with: “I am sorry. I got it wrong.” Then we could really have applauded her. |
| Jan Filochowski was chief executive of various NHS trusts for 20 years. He retired as chief executive of Great Ormond Street hospital in 2013 | Jan Filochowski was chief executive of various NHS trusts for 20 years. He retired as chief executive of Great Ormond Street hospital in 2013 |
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