NHS Reform: Time to implement costs?

By Hamzah Amir Ahmed

The NHS is on its knees: What’s the solution?

The NHS is in a crisis. Insufficient funding, a huge backlog, an ageing workforce and evolving healthcare needs are just a few of the major problems that the NHS faces. While it has always been a free service, the current situation has mooted the idea of charging for some services.

According to the Audit Scotland report, the maintenance backlog across the NHS now exceeds £1.1 billion. This is almost double the total 2022/23 capital budget and three times the future budgets that can be spent to address it. Even if savings are delivered as planned over the next three years, significant forecast deficits remain to be addressed.

Eva McCartney is a staff nurse whose primary role is to assist young children. She also helps with general duties such as changing bed sheets. McCartney has seen first-hand some of the alarming problems that hospitals face.

McCartney said: “[There is] a lot of overcrowding in hospitals, people come to the hospital without urgent issues, and this goes hand-in-hand with the short staff issue.”

McCartney believes that the NHS in Scotland could follow England’s approach.

She said: “They might follow suit with England because they pay for prescriptions and repeat prescriptions. Phoning an ambulance is another big issue. [People think] phoning ambulances will make them get seen quicker.

But it doesn’t, everyone is triaged, and it goes from there. I feel like this is something they could start charging for.”

Since its inception, the NHS model has worked for the most part, but through all the trials and tribulations in recent times, McCartney is surprised that the NHS has remained a free service.

She said: “Throughout the pandemic, I thought they would start charging because frontline workers had to use full PPE. They were dealing with a big virus and people were trying to be seen that didn’t need to be seen.

Providing staff with personal protective equipment, particularly during the pandemic, was costly

“A lot of workers were at risk working through the pandemic. I was very surprised because there was such a backlog.”