Latest news with #TenYearHealthPlan
Daily Mirror
01-08-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
GP doctors' surgeries are changing and carried out 7million more appointments
GP practices have delivered a third more appointments than before the coronavirus pandemic - but trouble may be brewing with family doctors threatening strike action GP practices have carried out seven million more appointments last year according to new NHS data. Practices delivered 31.4 million appointments in June which is up 32% on the same month pre-pandemic. GP surgeries host more non-doctor staff like physiotherapists who now carry out more appointments, while around a third are not face-to-face. There were 383.3 million appointments in the last 12 months, compared to 375.7 million in the previous year. It comes as the British Medical Association says its GPs members could strike unless they can help run new 'community hub' health centres being set up across the country in a major reform. Amanda Doyle, NHS England National Director for Primary Care and Community Services, said: 'General practice teams have been working exceptionally hard to boost access and turn our services around, with today's data showing important progress as over 7 million additional appointments were delivered in the past year. 'While services improve and patient satisfaction has started to rise, we know more needs to be done to improve access, which is why we remain committed to working with the government on delivering the 10-year plan to boost access and improve primary care services for patients.' The Government's Ten Year Health Plan will establish 300 new 'neighbourhood health centres' across England to help keep people out of hospitals. They will offer scans, checkups, straightforward treatment, and broader life help. They will include doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, counsellors, physios, health visitors, weight-loss specialists and even job advisers - but so far little guidance has been issued on who will run them. GPs want to lead new centres and are said to be 'alarmed' by hospital leaders' attempts to make themselves central to the plans. The BMA has written to Health Secretary Wes Streeting and health minister Stephen Kinnock setting out six demands on pay, contract funding and how much extra money they will get to work in and run the hubs. The BMA wants its demands met by mid-September to avert a strike among family doctors. Office for National Statistics polling in England shows 72% of people found contacting their GP practice easy, which was up from 60% less than a year ago in September 2024. Some 73% of patients rated their overall GP experience as good compared with 67% last year. The latest GP Patient Survey also shows 53% found it easy to contact their practice by phone, up from 50%, while 49% found the NHS app easy to use which is almost double the 25% figure from the previous year. The Government announced last week that an extra 2,000 GPs have been recruited through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). Health Minister, Ashley Dalton, said: 'Through our 10 Year Health Plan we are shifting care from hospitals to community. Our Plan for Change will deliver Neighbourhood Health Services that will put GPs at the heart of delivering more personalised, proactive care in local areas when it is more convenient for patients. We are on a mission to rebuild our health service and give people better access to care when they need it." Dennis Reed, director of Silver Voices, which campaigns for elderly Brits, said: "Any improvement in access to GPs is welcome but it is far too early to be blowing trumpets. On the ground it is still frustratingly difficult for patients to see an actual GP. "I suspect that many of these increased appointments are with other practice staff, where patients are often diverted for an initial diagnosis. GPs are still an elusive species in many parts of the country. And to celebrate the fact that less than half of patients find the NHS app easy to use is weird. Many older patients are unable to use the app at all because they do not have a smartphone or are unable to manipulate small screens."
Spectator
12-07-2025
- Health
- Spectator
Jewish doctors are sick of the BMA
Around sixty Jewish doctors, including senior consultants and general practitioners, have left or are planning to leave the British Medical Association. Their decision is not a fleeting protest, but a serious response to what they consider to be a deeper institutional malaise that has gone untreated for too long. Many Jewish doctors feel their concerns have been ignored The BMA, whose purpose is to protect its members' welfare, is now regarded by many Jewish doctors as compromised. They feel that it is no longer impartial, no longer safe. For a professional body that prides itself on care, inclusion and advocacy, this represents a systemic failure of grave consequence. The resignations follow the 2025 Annual Representative Meeting in Liverpool last month, for which dozens of motions were submitted, several of which were selected for debate, relating to Israel, Gaza, and the Palestinians. The resigning doctors say that these topics were disproportionately represented in a deliberately divisive and one-sided way, which may have contravened the BMA's own behavioural code as outlined in its Code of Conduct. The BMA, however, says that 'at ARM, four of more than 75 motions debated related to Israel and Gaza, the selection of which followed proper, rigorous and democratic processes.' Of only three motions picked on international relations, all were related to Israel, Palestinians, and antisemitism. None were included about any other international healthcare matters. In the emergency motions, a further motion was chosen which was critical of Israel, at the expense of more urgent issues such as the Ten Year Health Plan which is of particular concern to GPs but also all doctors. Among the motions passed this year were calls to boycott the Israeli medical association and a demand that the UK government support genocide charges at the International Court of Justice. Jewish doctors were also shocked by protests outside the meeting featuring old shoes as a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians – symbols that, for many, carry searing associations with Holocaust remembrance. The BMA said it is 'deeply concerned…that some Jewish members have raised issues regarding this year's conference' but that 'some of these issues relate to a protest which was held by an external group outside of the conference'. The BMA also told us that 'within these motions, policy was passed decrying antisemitism and calling for support for Jewish doctors' and that the motions also made 'principled calls on medical neutrality that apply to all conflicts worldwide'. But many Jewish doctors feel their concerns have been ignored. Dr Peter Albert, an acute medicine consultant in Luton and Dunstable hospital, is among those who have resigned. He describes a long-building disquiet: 'My discontent with the BMA has been growing over the past 18 months, chiefly in response to the BMA's biased approach to the conflict sparked when the terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel on 7th October 2023.' He says that attempts to cast the atmosphere as legitimate political criticism are disingenuous: 'How patronising of the BMA to explain to us what is and is not antisemitism.' The BMA said that there was no place for antisemitism within the organisation and that it condemned such discrimination 'in the strongest possible terms'. The issue at stake is not political dissent, but what seems to be an institutional failure to protect a minority. Under the Equality Act 2010, harassment includes 'unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic which has the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.' Critically, it is the effect that matters. That so many Jewish doctors now report feeling unsafe or unwelcome, irrespective of the BMA's stated intentions, places the organisation at risk of breaching this duty – something the BMA says it is 'confident' it did not do. But under the Macpherson principle, the perception of the victim is also integral to understanding a racist incident. The impact of this climate within the BMA for Jewish doctors cannot simply be dismissed. The BMA's choice to entertain so many motions on the Israel-Gaza conflict has created an atmosphere of imbalance and exclusion. These Jewish members no longer see the BMA as a representative home. Many of those resigning are GPs. Unlike hospital doctors, who have the option of joining the apolitical HCSA union, GPs rely entirely on the BMA for professional representation. For some, resignation therefore means forfeiting the protection of their employment rights. Others who remain are choosing to fight from within and may not yet feel able to speak publicly. There are also those who stay silent out of fear. That so many have already chosen to walk away is profoundly telling, especially given how small a proportion of the British population, and of the BMA's membership, is Jewish. It is important to recognise that those who serve on the BMA council and its committees are, by all appearances, intelligent, educated and public-spirited individuals. They have devoted their careers to the NHS, to the health of the nation, and to the collective strength of the profession. It would be extraordinary if such people, decent professionals motivated by service, failed to hear the plea of their Jewish colleagues. It is difficult to imagine that they are driven by antisemitism or would ignore it once clearly brought to their attention. Their integrity must now be tested not by their intentions, but by their actions. This crisis is not about shielding Israel from legitimate criticism. It is about the ethical duties of a professional association to safeguard all of its members from bias, exclusion and hostility. When the very institution designed to protect doctors becomes, for some, a source of injury, the condition is critical. It would be wrong to suggest that so many Jewish doctors are acting in bad faith. When exclusion is felt, and fear becomes real, it is not the critic's intent that matters, but the Jewish member's experience. The answer is not complicated. The BMA should return to its proper role: representing doctors in employment disputes and professional affairs, not entangling itself in divisive foreign policy debates for which it has neither the mandate nor the expertise. The government has made a poor enough job of diplomacy without medical unions following suit. If the BMA still aspires to be a home for all doctors, it must start by listening to those who now feel they no longer belong.
Daily Mirror
09-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Major NHS change will see everyone get a dentist within next four years
Big win for the Mirror's Dentists for All campaign as the Government commits to scrapping the 'absurd' NHS dental contract this Parliament Everyone who needs an urgent NHS dental appointment will be able to get one within four years, the Government has said. The minister with responsibility for dentistry has committed to reforming the flawed NHS dental contract by the end of this Parliament in a major win for the Mirror 's Dentists for All campaign. Health minister Stephen Kinnock gave the commitment when being grilled by MPs on the Health and Social Care Select Committee. Currently most dental practices are not taking on new NHS patients and millions of people cannot get a dentist. Stressing the urgency for reform, Mr Kinnock, Minister for Care, said: 'We're on a burning platform." "We have a moral imperative to fix NHS dentistry in our country. How can it be that we live in a country where the biggest cause of 5 to 9 year old children being taken to hospital is to have their decaying teeth removed? Tooth decay is an almost entirely preventable problem.' READ MORE: Dentist: 'I feel guilty but I'm quitting the NHS to earn more going private' The NHS dental contract has been branded 'perverse' by the British Dental Association as it disincentivises treating people who need care most - because dentists make a financial loss on high-needs patients. Last week's Ten Year Health Plan sparked fears that proper reform of the dental contract will be kicked into the long grass until after the next General Election. It only said that by 2035 a new contract would be at the heart of a "transformed" NHS system. Mr Kinnock said: 'We are absolutely clear that we have to fix this before the end of this Parliament. We want transformed NHS dentistry by 2035. But it is absolutely clear that the fundamental contract reform to put us on the pathway to change has to happen within this parliament. 'What does success look like by the end of this Parliament set for success? Everyone who needs access to urgent and unscheduled care must be able to access it and dentists must be incentivised and motivated to deliver NHS dentistry.' The Government commitment comes in the week the Mirror has published a series of special reports from Devon which is one of Britain's worst dental deserts. We heard how the underfunded contract is driving an exodus of dentists into the private sector and children are left in pain waiting for multiple teeth to be removed. READ MORE: Dentist being fined £150K by NHS for keeping patients' teeth too healthy However Mr Kinnock suggested the Treasury is refusing to fund radical reform. Any new contract will likely recycle current "underspends" where dentists currently have to return cash due to the flawed system. The total £3 billion budget for England is only enough to fund care for half the population. The committee heard that the budget for England has fallen from £3.6 billion in a decade and the British Dental Association said this equates to a funding cut of a third in real terms. Minister Kinnock said: 'I think we've got to define what we want to do with the NHS contract, based on the reality of the finite resource that we will have. We have to work on the assumption that we will have the financial envelope in the region of the current financial settlement. That is the reality of the world that we live in. So the question then is how do we make that NHS contract work to its maximum impact for the people who need it most? 'I think we need to be very clear and robust about, with the finite resources we have, this is what we can achieve.' Dr Shiv Pabary, BDA chair of the General Dental Committee, said: 'We've lost up to a third of our budget over the last ten years [in real terms]. Dentistry has had the most amount of money reduced as a proportion of the NHS budget. The spend in 2010 was 3.3% of the NHS budget now it's down to 1.5%. 'We've had huge cuts… we need to back any new system up with the necessary funding.' A key demand of the Mirror's Dentists for All campaign is reform of the hated NHS payment contract which currently leaves practices treating high-needs NHS patients at a loss. It pays dentists the same if a patient needs three fillings as if a patient needs 20 fillings. Dental contract reform was one of Labour's main manifesto promises before the 2024 General Election. Mr Kinnock said Britain has the lowest ratio of dentists per capita of any country in the G7. He said: 'When we came into government a year ago, we inherited a system in terms of NHS dentistry that was on its knees. 'We are clear that we have to have a contract that ensures that everybody who has an urgent need for dental care gets it, that dentists are incentivised and motivated to do NHS work, and that every single penny that is allocated for NHS dentistry is spent on NHS dentistry.' He added: 'When we say everybody who needs urgent care, gets it. It's about defining what we mean by 'need'.' Interim measures announced on Tuesday will attempt to begin to change a situation where dentists are disincentivised from treating the patients who need care most. It will require practices to provide a number of additional emergency appointments, on top of their regular patients, at an improved rate. The NHS contract pays the practice for each Unit of Dental Activity - known as a UDA. A check-up is worth one UDA while a filling is worth three. Dental practices are currently paid around £40 per UDA but for these extra emergency appointments practices will be paid £70 to £75.
Daily Mirror
03-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Keir Starmer's NHS plan explained – you won't have to go to hospital anymore
Most people don't like going to hospital. Whether it's the smell, people smoking around the entrance or simply the trepidation of what you are going in there for. NHS buildings are generally old and outdated and while the care delivered in them can be excellent, the hospital experience is one few look forward to. A&Es are often full of people going through mental health crises, waiting hours lying on trolleys in brightly lit corridors. The Government's Ten Year Health Plan aims to change hospitals by taking much of NHS care away from them - so they are freed up to carry out operations and treat the most seriously ill - and become more streamlined, pleasant places to get care. The plan has been billed as "one of the most fundamental changes in the way we receive our healthcare in history". Tests, rehabilitation, mental health and lifestyle support will now be offered in local centres. Sir Keir Starmer, whose wife works as a nurse, says his plan will 'fundamentally rewire and future-proof our NHS so that it puts care on people's doorsteps'. Here's what the new 'Neighbourhood Health Service' will mean for you. Patients will be offered scans, checkups, straightforward treatment, and broader life help at around 300 new local health centres. Every area will be slightly different but centres will include doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, counsellors, physios, health visitors, weight-loss specialists and even job advisers. The centres will be open in the evenings and on weekends. Currently Mondays are the busiest day of the week for A&Es and GP surgeries because of the reduced service at weekends. Brits are now living longer but with multiple chronic health conditions, often spending more of our lives in ill health. Different parts of the NHS currently treat each condition - despite them often affecting each other - leading to patients being 'passed from pillar to post'. The centres will treat the whole patient for all their ailments and aim to keep them well, out of hospital and living independently for as long as possible. By 2027 at least 95% of people with complex needs will be given personalised care plans. Neighbourhood health teams will be encouraged to go door-to-door to spot illnesses early. The centres will carry out cancer tests and other diagnostics, post-operative care and rehab services. By 2035 most outpatient hospital appointments will take place away from hospitals. These neighbourhood health centres will sometimes include GPs but in many cases will work in parallel to the local GP surgery. They will take a lot of the burden off overstretched GP practices which will also see a recruitment drive to attract thousands of new family doctors in England. Crucially, the government is promising a return to an expectation that you will see the same named GP on each visit. Health Secretary Wes Streeting explained: "We want to bring back that family doctor relationship, that continuity of care that particularly matters to people with a range of different health conditions, with ongoing health conditions, who are fed up of explaining themselves over and over." It comes after surging demand for GPs and unmanageable workloads led to an exodus from the profession during the last decade, with just over 28,000 now compared with 29,500 in 2015. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be used to take down GP notes during your appointment, and draft follow-up letters. The Government calculates that every 90 seconds saved per GP appointment could save the same time as adding 2,000 more doctors into general practice. AI call management systems will also see GPs phone lines answered quicker so patients can be better triaged. This is aimed at ending the "8am scramble" to get an appointment. A key part of the Government's reforms is the promise to move the service 'from analogue to digital'. In practice, this will mean the vast majority of us will routinely interact with the NHS via its app. When reporting a health concern via the app, AI will be used to triage symptoms and signpost people to the right care. Hospital performance and waiting time league tables will be published and patients will be able to 'shop around' on the app to see where they want to go for care. The NHS will become 'digital-by-default' with remote monitoring offered where possible. Experts have raised concerns that this could leave behind the most vulnerable and frail if they are unable to navigate systems. Ministers insist that most using the app will free up phone lines for those who are uncomfortable using the tech. Currently 12,000 hospital beds are filled every day with elderly and frail people who are medically fit for discharge. So-called 'bed blockers' are taking up much of our hospital beds because of a collapse in social care. Hospitals have a responsibility not to discharge people if there is nowhere safe for them to go. This usually means they may need a care home place or home visits arranged to help the elderly live independently. The Government has made bold promises on reforming social care but the timeline for substantial changes may run into the next Parliament. It has launched an independent commission into adult social care, chaired by Baroness Louise Casey, tasked with setting out the plan for implementing a National Care Service. It will produce a first report by 2026 but only make 'longer-term' recommendations for the transformation of adult social care by 2028. Professor Martin Green OBE, chief executive of Care England, which represents care homes, said: 'This is a plan that talks our language – prevention, personalisation, community-based care. But we've heard similar aspirations before, and the challenge has always been implementation. 'Neighbourhood Health Services could transform how people experience care. But without social care at the centre, they risk becoming a brilliant idea lost in translation. If we're serious about delivering care closer to home, we must start by backing the sector already delivering it.'
Spectator
02-07-2025
- Health
- Spectator
For the NHS, it's Wes or bust
Labour swept to power on a pledge to 'save the NHS'. As shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting said he would go 'further than New Labour ever did' to clear the health service's backlog and, to achieve this, he claimed old taboos would be torn up, including the use of the private sector to improve services. Failure to clear the backlog now will be hugely politically consequential for this government. Partly because of how important the NHS is to the voting public, but more so because of the emotional resonance the service and its 'free-at-the-point-of-use' model has for Labour, both its MPs and its supporters. If the party that founded the NHS cannot save it, who can? That is why the NHS has been mostly immune to Rachel Reeves's new austerity. At each fiscal event and budget, it has received consistent funding increases. Yet behind the headline figures lies the real question: will this money yield returns – or simply vanish into the system, absorbed by wage demands and patchwork firefighting? That is a question which the Ten Year Health Plan, published this week, seeks to answer. The prescription it offers is a familiar one. It bears the unmistakable imprint of the former health secretary Alan Milburn, architect of Labour's early-2000s health reforms who has now returned to advise Streeting. His tools are back: league tables and performance targets tied to executive bonuses. Foundation trusts will be empowered to meet centrally imposed benchmarks, such as the four-hour waiting time in A&E target. Structural reforms introduced while the Conservatives were in power – Integrated Care Systems and various independent watchdogs, including Healthwatch England – are being dismantled. Power is returning both to the centre and to hospital management. There is a reasonable case to be made for this – waiting times fell dramatically during the New Labour years. The last Conservative government's lack of willingness to challenge the NHS leadership after the failed 2012 reforms allowed for hundreds of useless quangos to spring up; the 'NHS Race and Health Observatory' being chief among them. There is plenty of fat to cut. But being more New Labour than New Labour is not a certain route to success. The fiscal context in 2001 – when Gordon Brown began to release funding for public services from the Treasury – is very different today, with Britain teetering on the verge of a sovereign debt crisis. In 2001 there had been a £15 billion surplus. Last year the deficit was almost £150 billion. The increases in day-to-day spending that Rachel Reeves is able to offer the NHS at the expense of other departments are substantial in cost but not impact. Thanks in part to demographic pressures, the NHS needs 3 per cent increases in spending to keep the service it provides running. Doctors and nurses are already being balloted for strikes in the next year, which will end with any extra money being swallowed by wage increases. New Labour was also able to reach record levels of capital investment through the Private Finance Initiative, the use of which was vociferously defended by Milburn, who dubbed it 'the only game in town'. But Reeves's Treasury has specifically stated there is no chance of a 'PFI 2.0' taking place. In short, there isn't any money. Can good management compensate for the absence of large-scale investment? And can targets and structural clarity deliver improvement without the 5 per cent real-terms annual increases of the early 2000s? On the former, this question has been threaded through debates on public-sector reform since Margaret Thatcher embraced an NHS internal market in the 1980s. It divides those who argue that output follows input – hire more staff, build more hospitals, spend your way out of crisis – and those who insist that quasi-market reforms can improve efficiencies without extra money. It was the key point of difference in Labour between the modernisers, who saw a mixture of devolution and incentives as the key for better public services, and the traditionalists, who believed that it was a question of staffing and money. Ask Tony Blair why the NHS got better in the 2000s and he would say it was the targets. Gordon Brown would say it was money. The next four years will provide an opportunity to settle the debate. Unless Wes Streeting, a capable person whatever his perceived flaws, manages to improve the NHS substantially in the next four years – showing that only taxing and spending more can improve public services – then we will be faced with an uncomfortable truth: the NHS has no future. If reform cannot deliver efficiencies, it is the model itself which is broken. We simply cannot sustain 3 per cent increases in real terms spending on the NHS year-on-year with an ageing population, just to keep it afloat. It is not a matter of political principles or willpower. The sums do not add up. If politicians will not be honest with the public about that, then they will have to hear it from the IMF. It really is Wes or bust.
