Is necessity the mother of healthcare innovation?

By Simon Gentry

We’ve known it was going to happen and figures released today have laid it bare – as we emerge from the pandemic, the NHS is facing another profound crisis.  Before the crisis started 1,600 people were waiting longer than a year for elective surgery.  The figure today stands at 388,000.  In total 4.7 million people are waiting for treatment in England.

Even that figure very significantly underplays the scale of the crisis.  As Professor Karol Sikora has been warning for months, tens of thousands of potential cancer cases have not been referred to specialists for diagnosis and treatment.  That applies for most conditions, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart disease, you name it, across multiple conditions a huge backlog has built up.  A backlog that may take years to clear and that could be seen as the Covid pandemic’s second act: a significant spike in deaths from other conditions that have not been diagnosed and are now untreated.

For the Government the Prime Minister has promised that the NHS would get all the financial resources it needs to beat the backlog.  That will reassure many, but it does beg the question of how big the NHS budget is going time be in two or three years’ time.  The total annual NHS budget before the crisis was around £140 billion and set to climb to £160 billion.  Much of that was spent on pensions and the NHS estate, but it was still the second largest chunk of government spending (Only pensions and benefits outstripped the NHS).

Even if the money is found, finding staff to undertake all this work is going to be challenging.  NHS staff reported feeling overworked before the crisis and the NHS has been under pressure by governments in developing countries to reduce or stop what they see as Britain stripping their own fragile healthcare systems of expensively educated and vitally important workers.

Some experts believe that the pressure will force the NHS to examine some of its more archaic methods and embrace new technologies to speed up treatment.  There are many companies that are pioneering new approaches but that have found it difficult to make headway.  The 4.7 million strong army of people needing care may be the spur the health service needs to examine its structures and practices.