‘Shocked’: Damning NHS report a ‘warning’ for Government

An independent review has laid bare the dire straits the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) is in, with the report’s author saying the system is ‘in serious trouble’.
 
The RACGP has been warning the Federal Government for some time that the writing is on the wall with the NHS, with this latest report stoking fears Australia’s healthcare system is being set up to repeat the same mistakes.
 
Commissioned by the health and social care charity The King’s Fund, the Independent Investigation of the National Health Service in England, written by Lord Ara Darzi, is a scathing assessment.
 
‘Although I have worked in the NHS for more than 30 years, I have been shocked by what I have found during this investigation,’ Lord Darzi wrote.
 
‘Everyone knows that the health service is in trouble and that NHS staff are doing their best to cope with the enormous challenges.
 
‘The sheer scope of issues facing the health service, however, has been hard to quantify or articulate.’
 
Lord Darzi found the system had been crippled by a shortfall of £37 billion ($72 billion AUD) of capital investment in the decade following 2010.
 
‘That sum could have prevented the backlog maintenance, modernised technology and equipment, and paid for the 40 new hospitals that were promised but which have yet to materialise,’ he said.
 
‘It could have rebuilt or refurbished every GP practice in the country.’
 
Central to the report’s findings is a flailing general practice industry.
 
RACGP President Dr Nicole Higgins says the review clearly shows that ‘failure to invest in general practice has been a critical misstep’.
 
‘The lack of understanding of the role that general practice plays in the healthcare system
has meant that the NHS is on its last gasps,’ she told newsGP.
 
Even though general practice remains the most common interaction people have with the NHS, Lord Darzi writes that ‘GPs are expected to manage and coordinate increasingly complex care, but do not have the resources, infrastructure and authority that this requires’.
 
‘The overall trend is for more GP appointments than ever before, with GPs working harder and seeing more patients,’ he said.
 
‘Yet there is still a struggle to meet patient demand, as the percentage of respondents to the GP patient survey who said they had to wait a week or more for a GP appointment increased from 16% in 2021 to 33% in 2024.’
 
Lord Darzi says the UK has almost 16% fewer fully qualified GPs than other high-income countries relative to its population.
 
‘GPs are seeing more patients than ever before, but with the number of fully qualified GPs relative to the population falling, waiting times are rising and patient satisfaction is at its lowest ever level,’ he said.
 
‘There are huge and unwarranted variations in the number of patients per GP, and shortages are particularly acute in deprived communities.’
 
The NHS budget is not being spent where it should be, Lord Darzi writes in his recommendations.
 
‘Too great a share is being spent in hospitals, too little in the community, and productivity is too low,’ he said.
 
‘Since at least 2006, and arguably for much longer, successive governments have promised to shift care away from hospitals and into the community.
 
‘In practice, the reverse has happened.’
 
He also found in 2023–24, clinical negligence payments jumped to £2.9 billion ($5.7 billion AUD), or 1.7% of the entire NHS budget.
 
Dr Higgins has repeatedly urged the Federal Government to raise general practice funding to 10% of the health budget to avoid falling down the same hole as the UK.
 
She says this latest report should serve as a yet another dire warning.
 
‘The message to our Government is funding drives outcomes,’ she said.
 
‘If you want a flourishing general practice sector, and to remain in the top five health systems in the world, we must better fund and value general practice.’
 
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