A tale as old of time: strengthening the private and public healthcare partnership by tackling the elective care backlog has recently been outlined by the UK Government, as the Prime Minister’s number one priority for the NHS – although many healthcare providers have reacted with a ‘same-old, same-old’ response.
HealthInvestor has covered the announcement, which outlines the “Elective Reform Plan”; an eighteen-week referral to treatment target across the NHS, whist Labour are in power. Solutions identified include expanding the use of community diagnostic centres, with a view of opening community diagnostic centres (CDCs) for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Additional plans focus on the digital transformation within the NHS, such as deploying AI to predict appointments, as well as remote patient monitoring to expedite the backlog.
As part of the proposal, Labour has set out a partnership agreement outlining the fact that patients need to be aware they have the right to choose providers – including private ones – demonstrating a statement of intent to have both public and private providers working in conjunction with one another.
In the article, it is observed by Michelle Tempest, partner at Candesic that: “There’s an acute issue, and we know the independent sector is willing to step in and help the NHS. Some estimates suggest the sector could even do 30% of all NHS work. As well as the issues facing the NHS – such as huge demand in A&E, long ambulance waits, the inability to discharge patients into care settings – you also have a huge elective care backlog which has worsened post-pandemic. We need to act quickly, because this cohort of long waiters is just getting sicker, and therefore more complex and expensive to treat.”
With the release of the 10 year plan addressing operational strategy to bring down elective care backlog due to be announced in April, much of the noise in addressing these challenges will remain to be seen.
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