Former chair and president of the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) Professor James Kingsland last week (April 25) said that “we need to see something very different” in the government’s upcoming 10-year health plan to ensure lasting change in the NHS.
Speaking at a Westminster Health Forum (WHF) conference on the priorities for the plan, Kingsland stressed that “there’s some lazy and limited thinking around prevention” within government.
Read more: Pharmacists urged to ‘submit ideas’ for 10-year plan to ‘fix NHS’
And chair of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard said that he is “fearful we won’t be overwhelmed” by the plan, adding that “the expectations of the 10-year plan may disappoint with regards to prevention”.
One of the “three big shifts” set to be outlined in the plan is a move “from sickness to prevention” – as well as moving care from hospitals to communities and making better use of technology - with pharmacy tipped to play a big part in this.
Read more: NHS consultation ideas: ‘National’ pharmacy, NHS bulk-buying and 111 pharmacists
Writing an open letter to pharmacists in C+D in February, NHS England (NHSE) chief pharmaceutical officer (CPhO) David Webb said that “pharmacy is a critical element” in all three of these shifts.
But it is now a waiting game to see how much the 10-year health plan will actually focus on prevention and what this will mean for pharmacists.
“Radical reform”
“Prevention is one of the - if not the - best tool to really bend that demand curve” in the NHS, Pearson-Stuttard told delegates.
“[But] why do I think we might not get what we’d like in the 10-year plan? I think it’s because we, collectively as a society, don’t quantify or value prevention,” he said, adding that we don’t “value the impact preventing ill health has on fiscal value, for example, preventing welfare benefits or productivity”.
Read more: CPhO: Why pharmacy is critical to the 10 Year Health Plan
Also speaking at the conference, Healthwatch England chief executive and co-chair of the 10-year health plan working group Louise Ansari stressed that “we do need really radical reform”, adding that “the NHS is still mostly a 20th century health service”.
“I think we can pretty much conclude that Wes Streeting...[is] not afraid to think about radical reform,” she said, but added that for the plan to succeed, “it’s going to need a workforce that’s up for the change”.
Ansari acknowledged that the plan “won’t be able to do absolutely everything” but added that “we can be optimistic about the development of the plan so far”.
“Vaccination should be a priority”
Meanwhile, director of policy and communications at multinational pharmaceutical company MSD UK Mark Johnson said that he “very much [hopes]” prevention will be one of the “core themes” of the 10-year health plan.
“If we really want to prioritise prevention, then we need to make clear to integrated care boards (ICBs) that even in the really resource-constrained environment, vaccination should be a priority,” he told delegates.
“Vaccination absolutely should be at the front and centre of the medical debate around prevention,” Johnson added, arguing that there needs to be a “shift” from viewing vaccines as “costs” to seeing them as “investments”.
Read more: HSCC to do ‘all it can’ to stop NHS consultation being ‘great big piece of nonsense’
The government urged pharmacists to take part in a months-long consultation – now closed - asking the “entire nation” to help shape the 10-year plan for the NHS in October.
In the same month, the health and social care committee (HSCC) stressed that it would do “all it can” to stop the consultation being a “great big piece of typical NHS consultation nonsense” and instead ensure it “makes some proper changes”.
The plan is due to be published in “spring 2025”.
