Wisdom of the Crowd: 65 views of the NHS at 65
The 5th July marked the 65th anniversary of the NHS. To mark the occasion, the Nuffield Trust has published a new report ‘Wisdom of the Crowd: 65 views of the NHS at 65’ which invites 65 health and political leaders to give their opinion on the current state of the NHS and social care system. They have been asked specifically to reflect on what they think needs to happen now and over the coming years to ensure the NHS and social care system is viable and fit for purpose in ten years’ time.
Contributors consisted of current and former health secretaries and ministers, senior civil servants, clinicians, managers, academics, patient representatives, journalists and other key individuals. Amongst the contributors is Lord Ara Darzi, the Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health from 2007 to 2009. Over the past 10 years, NHS funding had more than doubled and there were a series of reforms in England aimed at improving the quality and timeliness of care. Darzi states that the injection of money did a lot of good; there was a huge amount of progress, fantastic outputs and outcomes, but he feels we could have pushed the reforms even further.
He goes on to offer four suggestions of what the NHS needs to do now to remain viable and to divert the tsunami that is about to hit. They are: (more…)