NHS is loved and cherished – but that doesn’t mean it can’t change

THERE are a number of very specific problems putting the National Health Service under huge pressure right now. The coronavirus pandemic is still with us and still putting people in hospital, albeit in far smaller numbers than was once the case. And the knock on effect of all the routine surgery and appointments cancelled at the height of lockdown are still being felt, as they will be for some time.

But leaf back through the NHS records over many years and you can plainly see that blaming all the current ills of our much loved, but battered and bruised health service on coronavirus simply won’t wash. The truth is those two little words “health crisis” have been cropping up in newspaper headlines and news bulletins for decades.

Money has been thrown at the problem, but it is never enough. Reorganisations take place at regular intervals – too regular for some of the health care professionals and managers who have to implement them – but the impact often seems to fall short of what’s expected. And when a health emergency hits, whether it’s the major flu outbreaks in the early part of the 21st century, or the far more serious coronavirus pandemic, the pressures become too much to bear.

That’s not to denigrate in any way the hard work of the doctors, nurses and support staff, who fully deserved their weekly ‘claps’ from a grateful nation during the height of the Covid emergency. They rose to the challenge and prevented a great deal more suffering than might otherwise have been the case.

It was also the NHS which administered the coronavirus vaccine and is still doing so today. NHS professionals are also putting the flu jab into people’s arms in record numbers, ensuring, as much as is possible, that an even greater crisis than we are already enduring won’t come to pass. Fingers crossed.

But when you hear of the hip replacement patients in parts of the country facing four years of restricted mobility and pain because of record waiting lists; when you hear of cancer diagnoses missed because GPs cannot offer enough face-toface consultations, and when you hear of patients waiting four hours in A&E to be seen by a doctor, you have to conclude that, loved and cherished as it is, the NHS is in need of some major surgery.

Our health care system, free to all at the point of delivery, used to be the envy of much of the rest of the world. At its inception, not long after the end of the Second World War, it transformed lives and brought to an end the fear that many of the less well off had about falling ill and being unable to pay for treatment.

But huge developments in what’s possible with healthcare, an ageing and less healthy population and ever greater demands on the service have taken their toll. Governments of all persuasions know the huge affection most Britons have for the NHS and the unique way in which it delivers its care to all, without fear or favour.

But it’s an affection that has prevented politicians from radical reform that might actually be necessary to develop Britain’s healthcare service for the years to come. Maybe now that has to change?