The NHS should replace traditional hospitals with “dynamo centres” and new GP-led teams, according to a new Aiming for Health Success research study published by the independent Social Market Foundation think tank. The NHS should measure all costs of treatment and use that data to get more value from its £169 billion budget. The £20 billion New Hospital Programme should be cancelled and its funds used to invest in a modern hospital system.
The report argues that the NHS is drifting towards a three-tier system: worst in deprived areas, better in affluent areas and with more people buying private care. The Government’s main health announcement in 2023, the Long Term Workforce Plan, won’t deliver new medical staff for a decade. Ministers have blamed strikes for rising waiting lists but lists have been increasing since 2015, well before recent industrial action.
The health service is currently building new units of one or two operating theatres – so called “surgical hubs” – but units of this size are too small to make hospitals much more productive. Instead the report argues for a national network of “dynamo centres” on the model of the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre, with up to eight operating theatres or more, set up to treat patients faster and with higher standards of care. Most of today’s local hospitals should shrink in size. Patients could travel further for many non-emergency treatments and the NHS should offer more support for travel costs.
The NHS should do much more to develop local teams who can support people with long-term illnesses such as diabetes, projected to rise from 5.3 million in 2020 to 9.1 million in 2040, and help provide earlier diagnoses for cancer. Teams led by GPs and including physiotherapists, counsellors and other staff will make many trips for hospital treatment obsolete: 30 per cent fewer NHS patients should be attending hospitals in ten years’ time.
Senior team
Professor Nick Bosanquet
Nick was until recently Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College London. He is a former special adviser to the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee and member of the Government Cancer Strategy Group. He is a trustee of the charity Brendoncare, which provides care homes, independent housing and care and friendship clubs
Andrew Haldenby
Andrew has been a key figure in the Westminster and Whitehall policy debate for the last 25 years. He was head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, a position previously held by David Cameron and George Osborne. Most recently he was director of the think tank Reform for 14 years