NHS Long Term Plan
The NHS has been marking its 70th anniversary, and the national dispute this has released has actually centred on three huge realities. There's been pride in our Health Service's enduring success, and in the shared social dedication it represents. There's been issue - about funding, staffing, increasing inequalities and pressures from a growing and ageing population. But there's also been optimism - about the possibilities for continuing medical advance and better results of care.
In expecting the Health Service's 80th birthday, this NHS Long Term Plan takes all 3 of these truths as its starting point. So to be successful, we should keep all that's excellent about our health service and its location in our nationwide life. But we must deal with head-on the pressures our personnel face, while making our extra funding reach possible. And as we do so, we should speed up the redesign of patient care to future-proof the NHS for the decade ahead. This Plan sets out how we will do that. We are now able to because:
- first, we now have a safe and secure and improved funding course for the NHS, balancing 3.4% a year over the next 5 years, compared to 2% over the previous five years;
- 2nd, because there is wide agreement about the modifications now needed. This has actually been validated by patients' groups, expert bodies and frontline NHS leaders who since July have all assisted form this plan - through over 200 separate occasions, over 2,500 different actions, through insights provided by 85,000 members of the public and from organisations representing over 3.5 million individuals;
- and 3rd, since work that kicked-off after the NHS Five Year Forward View is now starting to bear fruit, providing useful experience of how to bring about the changes set out in this Plan. Almost whatever in this Plan is already being executed successfully somewhere in the NHS.
The NHS has been marking its 70th anniversary, and the national dispute this has released has actually centred on three huge realities. There's been pride in our Health Service's enduring success, and in the shared social dedication it represents. There's been issue - about funding, staffing, increasing inequalities and pressures from a growing and ageing population. But there's also been optimism - about the possibilities for continuing medical advance and better results of care.
In expecting the Health Service's 80th birthday, this NHS Long Term Plan takes all 3 of these truths as its starting point. So to be successful, we should keep all that's excellent about our health service and its location in our nationwide life. But we must deal with head-on the pressures our personnel face, while making our extra funding reach possible. And as we do so, we should speed up the redesign of patient care to future-proof the NHS for the decade ahead. This Plan sets out how we will do that. We are now able to because:
- first, we now have a safe and secure and improved funding course for the NHS, balancing 3.4% a year over the next 5 years, compared to 2% over the previous five years;
- 2nd, because there is wide agreement about the modifications now needed. This has actually been validated by patients' groups, expert bodies and frontline NHS leaders who since July have all assisted form this plan - through over 200 separate occasions, over 2,500 different actions, through insights provided by 85,000 members of the public and from organisations representing over 3.5 million individuals;
- and 3rd, since work that kicked-off after the NHS Five Year Forward View is now starting to bear fruit, providing useful experience of how to bring about the changes set out in this Plan. Almost whatever in this Plan is already being executed successfully somewhere in the NHS.