September 2015 - NHS Survival

Well this is a bit of a turn up for the books - it turns out I've joined a campaign called "NHS Survival" (www.nhssurvival.org). I must be getting old, and although that is of course a fact, I think it is also part of a process we all go through. Some people have opinions and are brave enough to say them out loud, fight for what they believe in and make their voice heard and some of those do it from a really young age....but in my case things took a little longer! 

I've never stood up publicly and fought for anything, but the NHS is different, I think the NHS is able to bring out passion in just about anyone, because it is so close to our hearts. Whether those people are employees or patients of the NHS, everyone has a view and everyone I know of speaks of it with a mixture of pride and increasingly concern.

There will always be a campaign about something, that is what makes the human race what it is. We don't always agree on everything and even what we do agree on, we don't necessarily agree on what the answer to any given conundrum might be. Of course these differing opinions are brilliant, the right answer is nearly always in there somewhere. So it is with the fight that is happening involving the NHS right now, the right answer....an answer or series of answers that will help the NHS move forward is there, but it is hidden in a fog of passion, arguments and confusion about the sheer size of the problem in hand.

My theory of the day is that actually the NHS is in a good place. If you had a small company turning over (say) £300,000 a year with a CEO and 6 staff, and the CEO decided they needed to save 10% of their budget because money was tight, their scope to change anything would be limited. There's not many staff, the small size of their company means anything they do will be tricky to accomplish, the 'easy' thing to do to save money quickly might be to make someone redundant. Harsh but clean and simple. With an organisation the size of the NHS, the task is of course made massively more complicated by the size and fragmented nature of the NHS, but the scope of where you can potentially make savings, improve efficiency and improve the service is vast, the opportunity is vast.

Today is now Sunday 6th September, I had begun writing this blog a few days ago. Today the news is full of yet more media stories about '7 day service' and 'mortality is worse for people admitted on a weekend' and I see passionate feelings expressed by the medical profession who don't agree with these stories in one way or the other and I've no doubt those feelings are justified. But I'm not seeing much agreement or much chance of the sides gaining common ground. As a patient this concerns me. This is what the public see day in day out (just a screenshot of a Google search for "NHS news"):

I think the public desperately needs to see some good news soon, I know I do.

On the upside, I wrote to and emailed my MP about the NHS Survival campaign and I have had an email back acknowledging me and promising a reply. I'll wait and see what comes along