📸 In pictures: Wes Streeting’s first day in office. Yesterday, we welcomed our new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care as he begins work to fix the broken NHS and ensure it is fit for the future.
Paul Martin
1mo
'Broken NHS'? Sounds like a political statement to me? Is this really the right tone? And why is it only the NHS that's broken? We don't improve healthcare outcomes without investing just as hard into social care. I wish Mr Streeting well. I voted for this change and I'm really keen to see it succeed but I'd prefer that systems were not flooded with money and to see the return of bursaries across all health and social care professions in order to support national recruitment and show we're really invested in supporting the health and care needs of this and future generations.
Luke Donohue
1mo
I sincerely hope that there is more focus on social care than the opening remarks have suggested. Social Care isn’t considered enough during the ‘fix the broken NHS’ conversation. With another promise to reduce waiting lists, there will be more pressures and existing problem of ‘bed blocking’. This will create all sorts of concerns over unsafe discharges - thus more pressure on a social care system that will be expected to pick up more (whilst being on its knees too).
Lyndsay Beal 💚
1mo
Don’t forget social care or else you’ll never fix the NHS because all the beds will be filled with people who can’t find care!
Neil Goodwin CBE
1mo
In addition to short term, targeted investment, the NHS needs radical reform to fix an aged model no longer fit for purpose. The biggest challenge it faces is demographic change. Over the next 40 years, the number of people in the UK aged 65-79 is predicted to increase by 30% to over 10 million, while the number of people aged 80 and over – the fastest growing segment of the population – is set to more than double to over 6 million. Contrast that with the prediction that people aged under 20 will decrease over the same period.
Liz Sargeant OBE
1mo
Let’s hope he can work with all in health and social care to find solutions to the broken state of the services. We will need to be courageous and radical driven by frontline staff and all of us who may need the service at any time
But no more money should be given to the NHS until what it is already getting is managed and spent properly; the same goes for all departments!
Angela Hill
1mo
Maybe you could hold people to account both in the NHS and local government. There seems to be a lack of ownership, respect and honesty. Lets try and be more efficient rather than chucking good money after bad.
Cathie Williams
1mo
Well, there’s a change of tone! Good luck Wes S: as well as the NHS there are amazing, committed social work and care staff to work with & more of us needing care, support & safeguards to live decent lives & contribute to this country, socially & economically. First steps to slow the spiral of people not getting social care & ending up in hospital or not getting treatment and ending up needing social care.
Neil Walker
1mo
Broken is an unfortunate term for a service where clinical professionals are working hard day in day out and delivering great results, I would say needs to be put on a track of continuous improvement. I would start with a massive investment in digital transformation to maximise efficiency. reducing the admin burden on clinicians and removing the need for so many administrators and managers. there is still far to much paper processing and obsolete IT systems that must be replaced and upgraded. We also need to face fact that there are not enough clinical staff and this isn't easy to fix but required again massive decade on decade investment in training more doctors more nurses more GPs please.
Managing Consultant - Transformation SCW.
1moI just hope he doesn't have the genius idea of another re-structure which just costs money, time and resources.