Quote Originally Posted by lisvaneblue View Post
Main areas that need attention:

1.Budget for health and social care need sorting. As we know lots of patients are taking up hospital beds because there is no provision for care at home. Part of the reason is that the social care budget is separate, so for local councils social care means cost, staying in hospital no cost. Sort bed blocking and that will help sort pressures on the ambulance service waits out side hospitals to discharge patients

2. GP services have become detached from the patients they are there to look after.

3. There is built in 'interia' in all parts of the health service and a lot of sloppy time consuming administrative practices, plus an immense multi tiered structure. It needs to smarten up its processes and flatten its structure and operate as a matrix organisation

4. There is an ongoing tension between day to day care and outcomes and the need for the brightest people eg doctors, surgeons etc to to do research, development and improve patient care.

5 There is too much autonomy in each trust, health authority, health region etc. They can spend a lot of money on their own personal agendas

That'll do for starters
Not often I agree with you but I do in this case. There is plenty of scope to change the system and I propose that the way to start would be to set up a cross party parliamentary commission to initiate deliberations.

I'm actually not averse to making the NHS a means tested system at its base; charges being implemented on a sliding scale according to income/wealth and having the support of a government backed Health Insurance scheme.

As long as rock solid guarantees of the rejection of future privatisation were obtained I think it a worthwhile starting point for discussion. However you are absolutely right there needs to be a dispassionate analysis on how the administration burden can be better organized.