Having criticized the approach the UK government is taking to reforming the NHS, it seems only fair that I should make a few suggestions of my own. Unburdened as I am by the responsibility to be serious or to come up with a proposal that actually works, I’m going to write up a few perhaps crazy suggestions this week and next. For my reform ideas, I’ve decided to set the following arbitrary constraints:

  • The basic remit of the NHS must not change: that is, any reform plan must preserve the ability of the NHS to provide quality care accessible to all and free at the point of delivery
  • The patient experience must not be changed, so that if a reform plan were enacted wholesale today, a patient attempting to use the health system tomorrow would not notice any practical effect on their lives or patient experience[1]
  • As much as possible, red tape and administrative barriers to healthcare access should be reduced at the level of the patient, so e.g. we should try to abolish lists and restrictions on hospital attendance
  • The system should allow cost containment
  • Where possible, the system should reduce inequality, or at least not make the current system worse

I will of course add extra rules wherever possible.

The four ideas I have so far are:

  • Radical privatization, which looks too good to be true and probably is (this is essentially a radical shift to a Japanese-style marketplace but with no private up-front payments)
  • Minimal privatization, in which minor changes are made to the hospital system to allow new entrants and private investment (essentially the Australian model hospital system tacked onto the British GP system)
  • A license system, with trade in licenses slowly opened up to allow increased privatization and resource reallocation (this is completely new but probably just a mechanism to achieve a mixture of the other three ideas)
  • Reform of the GP market only, to significantly improve the function of the primary care system while leaving the tertiary care system unchanged (essentially, the Australian model)

I hope these ideas will show that it’s possible to radically change the structure of the NHS without changing its essential relationship between patient and system, its fundamental funding arrangements or its main outcomes. I don’t claim that any of my ideas will work, of course, nor do they have to since I’m writing on a blog. But I suspect that even the most minimalist of them would be politically unpalatable in the UK now (and even more so when the Tories stuff up their current round of reforms).

Any other ideas in comments would be appreciated, and I’ll try and write them up too!

 

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fn1: This rules out care budgets and vouchers and some of the crazier ideas floating around in the UK and USA, that require patients to become active participants in health service planning