The UK Government published its 10 year health plan last week. This is particularly relevant for those with disabilities and health conditions. Around 25% of the population have a disability, and this accounts for 65% of the NHS spend. Therefore, changes to the NHS have the greatest potential to affect those with disabilities and long-term health conditions. The plan highlights three main changes it seeks to implement:
- Moving services from
hospitals more into the community
- Moving from
analogue/paper to digital services
- Moving from treating
illness to preventing illness.
It sees costs moving out of hospitals and into
neighbourhoods, and a greater number of GPs using digital approaches. It wants
the funding to reflect the needs of the population. Key elements for people
with disabilities and long-term health conditions are:
- Having agreed care plans
for those with complex health conditions
- Having Personal Health
Budgets with individual control over how that is spent
- Being able to use the
NHS app to directly book appointments with specialists
- A plan for continuous
care for those with chronic conditions
- Allowing people to get
more for their conditions from their pharmacy
- A focus on wearable
technologies to assist with continuous care
- The NHS app will allow
access by people with caring responsibilities
- More emphasis on
genomics to improve knowledge and diagnosis
- Recognition that
insurers ‘compete’ to avoid covering those with complex situations
- Protection of benefits
for those with the highest needs
More generally, I also spot:
- Greater access to many
things through the NHS app
- Greater transparency in
decision making through data on waiting times etc.
- Staff using AI more to
assist in their work
My other interesting item of the week was The Bottom Line on Radio 4 talking about care homes. Several people who work in the care home sector were chatting, and one summed up very nicely that their main role is listening to the stories of the people that they care for - and this is not something which a robot could ever do. It will be interesting to see how this sector plays out in the NHS changes.
