What the new NHS plan means for you
This comes after the ministers announced that the NHS annual budget will be increased by £20 Billion by 2023, with the NHS plan seeing to shift money from hospitals to mental health and the community, but the big question on everyone’s mind is: “how does this affect me?” which this article aims to answer by giving a quick way of viewing the proposed medical changes.
Better Mental Health Support
The proposed idea and the ambition is for £2.3 billion of the additional budget to be used to improve the mental health care within the NHS, with this helping to ensure there are improved mental health services for young people so they are not pushed into adult services when they reach 18.
This also means there will be a psychiatric liaison team in every hospital to ensure patients get the right support from every hospital.
The issue with all of this is the fact that many refer to the mental health support from the NHS as quite poor, with there being a lot of ground to make up which could make it so that budget doesn’t go as far as you would hope.
Tech Overhaul
Improvements in technology have massively improved the level of convenience in our lives, the ease of access to data as compared to 10 years ago is like night and day, and unfortunately, the NHS is still very behind on technology, the proposal plans to improve the usability of NHS services by improving the technology behind it.
This means things like GP booking and prescriptions will be made even easier to manage online with proposals of video consultations to minimise wasted time at the GP and walk-in-centre.
The issue is that this isn’t the first attempt to improve the technology behind the NHS, but due to the size and scale of the NHS, it is not an easy feat to fix and resolve.
Better Cancer Detection
Currently half of people that are diagnosed with cancer are found early, by which we mean stage 1 or 2, where chances of remission are very high, the plan is to get this number far higher, meaning 3 quarters are found early, potentially saving around 55,000 people from cancer over the next 10 years.
The issue is that part of the problems with cancer come from the time it takes for treatment to start, as well as finding staff members qualified for treating cancer, which isn’t something that throwing money at will necessarily solve, but the higher budget should allow for more wiggle room…
Conclusion
This increase in budget aims to exponentially improve the NHS in many areas, and the plan looks to cover many important areas to ensure that the spend is used as effectively as possible. What are your thoughts on the NHS plan and budget increase? Comment them below!