What is the NHS actually for?

I pose this as today's question after reading an article in the Herald.   Is the NHS there to ensure that people are treated quickly and effectively as possible?  I hope you will agree with me that this is what the NHS should be doing. 

And here is the problem.  It’s not.  Why?  Well, as the carefully and thoughtfully written article about retired neurologist Dr Ian Bone, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer after he went to see his GP with a sore foot, points out the NHS as we know it today is not about treating a patient as quickly and effectively as possible.  It is about treating a patient quickly and effectively as possible within the structures and systems of the NHS monolith. 

Even if a patent can be treated quicker and as effectively by some other provider, the NHS won’t pay as this article demonstrates. "But why not?" I hear you ask.  After all, we have all paid our taxes for getting health care at the point of need for free through our taxes.  So why insist it can only be spent in the nationalised health provision business and not on treatment by some other provider who can do it quicker and more effectively?

I had occasion to come across this problem recently when my daughter damaged her knee.  Waiting time in the NHS?  Oh, about 6 months probably.  But if you went to another provider, the response was “When would you like to come in to get it done”.  It really is time we stopped treating the NHS as the only provider of service.

Let’s just think what the NHS is.  It has only one role.  And that is to provide a free at the point of delivery healthcare service to the nation.  Does it mean it has to have a big organisation to do this?  To actually run hospitals?  I think not.  That is such old thinking and it restricts the clinical excellence we do have in the UK form blossoming into a world class system.  Which it's not.

So lLet the NHS concept of free at the point of delivery flourish.  But endow it with the opportunism of innovation and free thinking.   But for that to happen the politicians have to agree that the NHS needs to end its monolithic sole provider status.  Only then will innovation and fresh thinking waft through the wards.   Let’s save the NHS by liberating its ability to care for people at their point of need.  Let the money follow the patient like Dr Bone.  Even if it means the money goes to Germany.  For me, the patient should always come first.