NHS plan to concentrate on prevention may save half a million lives

Those in charge of the NHS in England have announced that a recently devised 10-year-plan may save half a million lives through the increased focus on prevention and early detection.

The Prime Minister firstly announced a budget increase of £20bn a year for the NHS by 2023. Out of this budget, the forthcoming plan will see mental health, GPs and community care receive a third of the funding. At present, these areas don’t even receive a quarter of the budget, whilst hospitals receive around half of the overall NHS funds.

Mental health will receive an extra £2.3bn which will go towards services such as mental health support in schools and a 24-hour mental health crisis care service.

GP and community care will receive a £4.5bn increase which will be spent on a number of services such as DNA testing for children with cancer, digital access to health services and healthy living programmes for patients.

The overall aim is to reduce the reliance on hospitals and instead promote other ways of getting help. The plan is predicted to help an additional 345,000 young people with their mental health and prevent around 150,000 heart attacks, strokes and cases of dementia.

With many hospitals not meeting targets for waiting times in A&E, cancer care and routine operations, it is no surprise that the proposed plan was not popular for all. Many criticised the fact that the extra £20bn will only go towards frontline health care and will not improve training and public health. Unions have also said that the high number of staff vacancies may undermine the whole plan.

Kate Smith, Solicitor in the Medical Negligence team at Ashtons Legal, comments: “It is important that the money outlined in the plan is wisely spent. It appears from review of what the funding will pay for that key areas such as mental health, support in the community and healthy living programmes have been addressed. However, it does not yet appear to have dealt with the ongoing staffing issues within the NHS and how best to deal with this. Although focus should be spent on future plans it must not be forgotten that we need to ensure that the staff we currently have are looked after as they continue to remain under huge stress and pressure.”