Wednesday, July 05, 2023

Solving the problem of the NHS

It doesn’t go down well to say that we have too much medicine (eg. see previous post) when we have so many people on NHS waiting lists. Although it is true that the NHS is currently unsustainable, particularly when care has become so fragmented and dysfunctional, the answer is not just more money. Hopefully the recently announced NHS Long Term Workforce Plan will help, but more fundamentally the NHS does need to prioritise responding to need rather than demand. 

Ironically, it is the NHS itself that has often inflated demand. The overmedicalisation of society must be reversed in the interests of the country’s health.