The Five Steps To Getting NHS Off Life Support And Back To Health

Top Doctor's plea to health service

- Lucy Johnston

RADICAL changes are needed to save the NHS from a perpetual crisis, but a focus on five key areas would make it achievable, a consultant and adviser to NHS England says. Dr Andy Stein, author of a forth coming book, Understanding the NHS, believes the fortunes of the health system could be turned around in five years if the political impetus is there.

But it would mean governments from all parties looking beyond their own term in office and at the greater good of the country, he said.

Dr Stein says measures like splitting elective and emergency care and seven-day working would have a huge effect on NHS performance and get rid of most waiting lists.

The social care system needs to be integrated with the NHS and the IT needs to be resolved, he says.

He also calls for a minister of public health, who would oversee provisions for any future pandemic.

Here Dr Stein outlines the moves he believes demonstrate that fixing the NHS needn’t be “a pipe dream”.

He explained: “As we move into a post-Covid world and learn to live with the virus, we now have to deal with the almost six million on the waiting lists for operations.

“That is nearly 10 per cent of the population. We have to realise that we’ve had an imbalance and an over focus on one disease.

“We cannot go back to how we were. The system has passed its tipping point. When a complex system breaks down it is not fixable without slow radical change.

“People are already dying waiting for operations and hip replacements. This is happening because the waiting list is so massive.