Every year, there is the challenge of ‘Winter Pressures’ on the NHS. This year has been no exception, indeed nationwide demand on the day after Boxing Day was the highest ever placed on the NHS. As we support a growing elderly population, we can expect that demand to keep growing.
What to do about this is not a new debate. Ensuring that primary healthcare provision is sufficient to meet our needs must be the first priority. Meaning we’ll need more GPs, we might need to look again at the services pharmacists are able to offer, and we’ll need to invest in public health initiatives that – if done properly – will reduce the number of people falling ill in the first place.
Thereafter, ensuring that our hospitals are not used for the wrong things is key too. Hospitals are not a GP surgery for those with the flu nor are they a nursing home for those awaiting adult social care. Arguably, sorting out the pinches in Primary Healthcare will sort out the first of those problems but I also like the suggestion that every A&E Department should have a GP on duty and to whom the A&E reception can divert those who should not be entering the hospital system.
The greatest challenge of all though is stopping our hospitals from becoming nursing homes. The statistics for the number of beds in Weston, Taunton and Yeovil that are occupied by those who could already have been discharged is eye watering. Solving it will require investment in community healthcare services so that those still needing basic clinical assistance can be supported in their home where recoveries are quicker and infection rates – obviously – are much lower.
And for those who just need a bit of support in living their daily life, we need to ensure our adult social care system is able to meet the rapidly growing demand. The cost of this will be significant but it starts with the Local Government Funding Settlement that we’ll be seeing through Parliament over the next few weeks. I thought I’d write more on that battle next week once I’ve had a chance to see which way the wind is blowing up in Westminster.
In the meantime, we should be clear. The Red Cross are wrong to say that our NHS faces a ‘humanitarian crisis’ especially when our local hospitals – and their staff – have done so much to prepare for the annual surge in demand they’re now seeing. But we cannot be complacent either. The things we want our NHS to do have changed in the last fifty years and the year-round demand has rocketed too. As technology advances and the demographic continues to change, our requirement for the NHS will change further still.
In Somerset some very knowledgeable and forward thinking clinicians have designed our local Sustainability and Transformation Plan. That is exactly as it should be – they are the experts not we politicians. Unsurprisingly they address all of the things I’ve mentioned in this column and then much more besides. It’s not a cost-cutting exercise but a necessary re-evaluation of the challenges our local health services face now and how we best deliver a healthcare system that meets those needs. Inevitably there will be bits of it that we won’t all agree with but I commend it to you nonetheless. Quite rightly this is a process being led by clinicians but I am clear that after empowering them to develop this vision; Government must be willing to fund the transition.