Chief Executive’s Message – Friday 7 July
July 7, 2023
This week we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the NHS. I use the word celebrate deliberately because I honestly feel that we should do more than just note it, we should celebrate the NHS, what it stands for and reflect on what life would be like if we did not have it.
It is easy to be very downbeat about the NHS now and I am not alone in occasionally slipping into a narrative about the NHS being in terminal decline. I check myself whenever I do this for one reason – that being that if we fall into this trap, we will enhance the unhealthy narrative that the NHS is an outmoded concept which needs to be ditched and replaced with “an alternative” system. There are two issues I have with this assertion. One is that those people who say this, never articulate clearly what the alternative is. Secondly, those who say it are almost always those who can afford to “go private” or they are people who haven’t yet faced the fear associated with acute or serious illness or injury.
Yes, the NHS is struggling. The next, exhausting wave of non-consultant and consultant medical strike action is a symptom of this. So is much of the crumbling estate we work in, the vacancies we struggle to get ahead of in recruitment terms, the post-COVID recovery journey for staff and quality standards and the downward pressure from politicians of all colours, for us to achieve rapid results and improvement, in the context of our resources not keeping pace with inflation or demographic change. I cannot and will not ignore those realities and what it means for our staff or our patients. However, to drive us on and to ensure we do celebrate the 75th birthday of the service, we must remind ourselves about the great principles of the NHS and locally, remind ourselves about our own local circumstances and reasons to be optimistic:
Firstly, the NHS and its principles. Needs led, person centred care, free at the point of delivery, not based on your ability to pay. Can there be a more unifying or inspiring set of principles than that? They are the reasons why I joined, and they are the reason I still get out of bed every morning and come to work.
Secondly, our local circumstances. We serve some of the most deprived and ethnically diverse populations in the country. They are the people who deserve and need a service based on the principles I described above. A major development that should lead to significant improvements for them and for you as our colleagues, is the Midland Met Hospital and its associated care model. Not only are we imminently going to occupy a state-of-the-art hospital to replace our outmoded and declining estate, but we are also adopting a care model for our local population which focuses as much on chronic disease management, admission avoidance and community care, as it does on hospital admission. Our local population need both that new hospital and the radical change to care which will underpin it. I cannot think of a better motivation than that.
Happy birthday, NHS. May you live for another 75 years.