Kavita Bisht
The new health secretary Mr Wes Streeting has commissioned an independent review of the NHS performance in England. He wants to reveal the bitter truths about the present day situation of the service which he defined as disintegrated. Streeting stated in a newspaper article that the results of this inquiry will be incorporated into his 10-year plan for the NHS.
In order to transform the NHS, Streeting had to take his time in explaining the problem’s diagnosis. He said, “For anyone who has an interoperation in or uses the NHS it is only too obvious that the service is fatally flawed.” Patients are now having to wait 8 to 12 weeks for some operations. Getting a doctor’s appointment is difficult, and the ambulance’s response time is unpredictable.
Speaking to so many people during the election campaign, Streeting came across tens of thousands of people who had been let down by the NHS. Among them are an RAF veteran who anticipates having to wait 15 months for a procedure, and an 88-year-old woman who fell out of bed and has been waiting for an ambulance for three hours. Streeting pointed out that these are not rare cases but the reality faced by many patients in the country.
Hard Truths for a Broken System
A new study on the matter claims that the attempts to reduce the number of patients awaiting treatment in the NHS have been decreased and have now returned to normal. Currently, it is possible to state that no major waiting time standards related to A&E, hospitals, or cancer treatment have been achieved in England since 2012. The value of reversing the pre-COVID trajectory of the NHS in England lies in acquiring fresh data of waiting times which will be unveiled on Thursday, the first time since the new government took its post.
Some of the previous concerns raised by the Nuffield Trust’s experts include that Labour is likely to inherit a list of patients who have booked appointments for pre-scheduled hospital treatments, and the list contains about 7. 5 million people in England are now on a waiting list, this is a third higher than before the Covid crisis. Although some categories of the waiting list have decreased significantly in recent months, like the surgery for cataract, other essential surgeries have not been as successful in regaining the levels of the same period of 2020.
The investigation will be conducted by Lord Ara Darzi who had served as an adviser and minister to the Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It should now be noted that Lord Darzi is an independent peer who means to contribute a lot of experience and knowledge to the consideration.
According to Streeting, it is possible to bring a renaissance in the NHS if the mentioned issues are addressed effectively. Indeed, the situation can be changed in NHS but before it happens one must know what is ailing the system, the man said. This paper is an important process of evaluating the state of modern NHS and revealing the reasons for many problems as well as finding the ways of their solutions.
Presently, the context suggests that the resuming review and its outcome will be instrumental for charting the further development of the NHS. Despite his relatively young age, Streeting is dedicated to the health service, and as the new Health Secretary, he wants the health service to be capable of handling the population’s needs in the most efficient way. The public along with the NHS staff will be closely observing the results of this particular probe coupled with the management steps that will be taken to advance the service.
This extensive literature review seeks to identify the core problems that affect the NHS so that an effective and efficient solution can be propounded. As such, it is quite clear that Streeting’s initiative is a loud step forward towards a more efficient, transparent and trustworthy NHS for the public.
