What is the new Labour government plan for NHS in 2024?
We don’t know yet. We hope it will be revealed soon.
5th July 2024. The people have spoken.
What happened
- A Labour landslide (412 seats; 34% of vote)
- Conservatives have done poorly (121; 24%), partly due to votes lost to Reform (5 seats, including Nigel Farage; 14%). Many ministers (including ex PM Liz Truss) have lost their seats. No conservatives in Wales. Plaid Cymru gained 4 seats (1%) in Wales
- Resurgent Liberal Democrats (72 seats; 12%)
- Collapse of SNP in Scotland (9 seats; 2.5%), mainly to Labour
- Sinn Fein (Irish Nationalists) with 7 seats (1%) are largest party in Northern Ireland
- 4 Green MPs (7%)
- Poor turnout – 60% (down 7.6% from previous election in 2019).
How will Labour Fix the NHS?
We all know the NHS has major problems at present. We don’t know the Labour plan to fix it.
But, CKDEx feels these are the top five priorities for the NHS:
- GPs – make many more face-to-face GP appointments with an experienced doctor. Create a new GP target = >95% people must be seen within 2 weeks of request
- Hospitals
- Get waiting lists down – including 18 weeks and cancer waits. Building many surgical treatment centres will be needed. Use private hospitals until they can be built. Hit major targets within 2 years of election
- Get hospitals flowing – by introducing a full 7 days service, and sorting social care. Ditto
- Mental health – make it a major focus, especially for children
- Dentistry – sort out. Full stop
- Leadership – this is the most important area
- NHS England – remove
- Recreate tension (performance management) – of purchaser (DHSC) over providers (hospitals, GPs etc). This may require a change to a social insurance model as in the Netherlands. There is more information here on CKDEx on how to that.
- IT (Information Technology) – recreate NHS Digital, linking up subregional EPRs, creating a national Electronic Patient Record (EPR), linked to the NHS app.
Note. CKDEx does not think huge amounts of more money, beds and staff is the main answer. Much of the above is about improving efficiency and challenging traditional work practices (mainly of doctors).
Summary
We have discussed what might be the new Labour government plan for NHS in 2024. We actually don’t know, yet. We have given our ideas on how to fix the NHS. Leadership is the most important area where change is required.
Other resources
Related articles:
Problems
Jammed NHS hospitals – five problems and solutions
Solutions
A new NHS for a new age: let’s go Dutch
How to convert the NHS into a Dutch-style social insurance model
What do you think?
What do you think the new government’s priorities should be? Please put your view on our Facebook page.
For the NHS, the hard work starts now ..