A new 10 year plan for the NHS, focussing on community care, has been announced by the Prime Minister.
The PM is, as successive PM’s have tried to do, attempting to sound resolute, that he has now seen the solution that will, once and for all fix health and social care.
The problem is that we’ve heard it all before, many, many, times. Nobody believes it. Indeed given that health and social care are inextricably linked and, that the Casey review isn’t due to report until the latter part of 2026, how they can claim to have a coherent plan now is bewildering.
With a few notable exceptions, the system doesn’t work. The NHS is a behemoth, mired in bureaucracy, riddled with individual fiefdoms operated by, in some cases, well meaning individuals, who each believe that they have unique challenges and their own solutions. NHS management want to protect their positions, NHS staff want more pay.
There are some givens: a shortage of trained staff, an estate of ageing and often unfit assets, a changing demographic, a system that is trying to deal with issues that it’s never faced such as a growing population of older people with more long term chronic conditions, a mixed economy of public and private sector, unions, and a country that is, to put it simply, broke.
The rhetoric that the politicians use, not only sounds hollow, but is. It’s unsubstantiated, short on detail and more problematically, there’s no explanation as to how it is to be funded.
Tony Stein, Chief Executive, HCMS
