We need to secure a thriving NHS

STAFF across the NHS are fighting not just to give patients the care and treatment they require but to keep the ideals of a health service alive.

This winter the NHS is under tremendous pressure as flu and an increase in elderly patients put already challenged services under greater strain.

People across Wales will have felt deep disappointment when they learned that their operations were deemed non-urgent and have been postponed.

Such experiences are emotionally taxing and deepen the sense in communities across the nation that the NHS is not working as its founders envisaged. This begs the question, does it need more cash, fundamental reform – or both?

The prospect of yet further management shake-ups will make staff groan at a time when A&Es are compared by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine to “battlegrounds”. Twenty-four hours a day, staff strive to respond to crises and keep people alive, and bureaucratic upheavals have the potential to make a stressful job even more demanding.

The challenges facing the NHS in Wales made headlines across the UK this week when doctors wrote to the First Minister and the Prime Minister to describe the problems they are facing.

At stake is not only the health of people who come through the doors but their dignity. Reports of individuals who are in pain and distress waiting hours to be seen – often in chaotic surroundings – are disturbing.

For decades, people have gladly paid the taxes because the fear, destitution and suffering that existed in pre-NHS Britain is within living memory. But every bad experience prompts the question, is there a better way for this money to be spent?

Can the days of ambulances queuing outside A&Es come to an end? How can the GP system be reformed so more people can get appointments at appropriate times?

The individual examples of compassion in the NHS are breathtaking, but can structures be improved so people who are in pain or frightened can receive the operations and referrals they need at a much faster pace?

The goal should be to see the NHS thriving, not just about managing. And for devolution to fulfil its potential, we should have a markedly better health service in Wales than would exist if it was run from Whitehall.

One of the triumphs of the NHS is that people are living longer, but a defining test will be if it can meet the challenge of caring for greater numbers of elderly men and women. People must not be frightened to get old.

If the NHS crumbles in Wales in the next decades, then a critical aspect of self-government will have failed. But if this nation shows how fundamental challenges can be overcome, we will have blazed a trail that will inspire and inform the rest of the world.

This requires unprecedented cooperation with the care sector and across the public services but breakthroughs are within reach.