Sunak’s recent decision to ’empower’ patients by giving them the option to travel further or go private to receive treatment highlights the continued struggles of the NHS to cut down on waiting times.
Sunak’s Decision
Rishi Sunak recently announced that GPs will now be required to offer patients up to 5 healthcare providers where clinically appropriate. They will have to give patients the option to travel further for treatment or to go to a private alternative (bypassing the NHS).
The aim of this measure is to tackle the continued NHS backlog in an attempt to reduce waiting times for treatment.
British Medical Association’s Response
Dr Kieran Sharrock, acting chair of the BMA England GP committee said:
“While we agree that patients should be at the centre of decision making about their care, doctors working in both primary and secondary care are acutely aware that our patients just want to be seen in good time and close to home. It is long waiting lists, due to the long-term undervaluing of NHS staff and poor workforce planning, that are preventing this from happening, not a lack of patient choice”
“There are no shortcuts here- in order to make real progress, the Government must focus its efforts on addressing the workplace crisis across the NHS, investing in the health and appropriately valuing staff. That is the only way to tackle the record-breaking backlog and help patients who are desperate to be treated swiftly and close to home”
This is a particularly prominent set of points when we consider figures that show the NHS to be strained, and its staff to be overworked. The number of patients per fully qualified GP has grown in 66% of practices since 2015; this means that each GP is having to deal with more and more patients every year.
Further to this, the BMA recommends that GPs see no more than 25 patients a day. Despite this, over the whole of March, the local GP practices for 62% of people living in England’s most deprived neighbourhoods saw over 25 patients a day on average.
The Turn to Private Healthcare
Sunak’s recent decision highlights NHS’s struggle as he is essentially trying to get GPs to get more patients to use alternatives to the NHS (through private options), to reduce the load it is taking on.
Therefore, it comes as little surprise that Aviva reported a 25% increase in the number of new health insurance policies taken out with them in the first 3 months of this year. Private healthcare is becoming increasingly enticing as the NHS continues to be understaffed, underfunded, continually backlogged, and plagued with strikes from its stressed-out workers.