Our colleagues at Healthwatch England have outlined the four things that matter most to you when it comes to healthcare and how they should shape the 10-Year Health Plan to fix the NHS in England.
In October 2024 the government announced the development of a new 10-year Health Plan for England. It set out three core ‘shifts’ that needed to take place to reform the NHS and make it fit for the future. These are:
- Moving care from hospitals to communities
- Making better use of technology, shifting from an analogue to a digital NHS
- Focusing on preventing sickness before people need treatment
Healthwatch England argues that while these shifts align with what lots of people want to see from the NHS in England, people’s needs, preferences, and choices must underpin these changes. Based on public feedback, its submission to the 10-Year Health Plan set out four priorities for patients, their families, and their carers:
Patient Choice
Patients have a right to be involved in making decisions about their care, along with rights to have preferences met, and the right to choose where they receive healthcare.
However, people have shared that many NHS decisions feel weighted too far towards what works for teams delivering care. People’s choice is often not just a matter of personal preference but essential to access due to communication requirements, affordability, or work or caring commitments. People want flexibility in appointment types, times, and types of professionals they can see.
“I haven’t had my hip replacement yet – on a waiting list. But I’ve been amazed that I’ve been able to choose to have my op at a local private hospital on NHS, 20 minutes from my home. The alternative was to travel to the NHS unit 45 minutes away. Well done NHS, for giving me patient choice.”— Story shared with Healthwatch England
Getting the basics right
Although the NHS is made up of many organisations, it should feel like one coordinated and connected service to people accessing it.
But people have said they can find it difficult to understand and navigate an often complicated and confusing health system. This includes people feeling bounced between teams who lack understanding of who does what, and what support people may need to access their care.
Disjointed systems that don’t “talk to each other” mean that people’s medical records, including communication needs, are not consistently recorded. Inaccurate and missing information in people’s medical records can cause delays in receiving care and seriously affect patient safety.
“Exhausting and very annoying for me to have to start everything over when GPs can tend to be sceptical to patients’ descriptions of diagnoses and tests that are not on their records.” – Story shared with Healthwatch England
Tackling health inequalities
People who already face inequalities are more likely to be affected by problems in the NHS. This can include people from ethnic and minority backgrounds, disabled people, neurodiverse people and those living in rural communities or on lower incomes. Many of these people face challenges such as longer waiting lists, communication barriers and increased costs when accessing healthcare.
This can exacerbate the lack of trust many communities feel in health and care services, including a reluctance to give feedback on experiences and to engage with services.
“I need a dental sign-off in order to continue essential treatment related to a cancer diagnosis. I am unable to find an NHS dentist and cannot afford private treatment therefore I cannot have the medication required to continue my treatment.” – Story shared with Healthwatch Dorset
Measuring people’s experience of care
Current performance measures focus on hospital care and tend to look at numbers through the door and length of wait, with reducing waiting times a key focus for NHS leaders in recent years. This is important and matters to patients, but an individual’s experience of waiting, comfort, choice of care, and communication with services are just as key.
NHS performance should be formally measured against patient experiences to understand where and why poor experiences exist – and, importantly, whether 10-Year Health Plan policies are working for people.
For each of the above priorities, Healthwatch England has formulated a response with a suggestion of what needs to happen next. You can read the full report and its recommendations here.
