In April 2018, Lord Darzi, former health minister and NHS chair of surgery at Imperial College, London, published an interim report,10 years after his publication High Quality Care for All. Kate Woodhead examines the report which reviews the current state of health and social care,1 a decade after the last report.
The NHS is about to celebrate its 70th birthday, so this seems an apposite moment to review where we have come from, even in the short term, and how the future is looking. Lord Darzi’s last report, High Quality Care for All was refreshing as, instead of identifying administrative and management changes to healthcare, it suggested clinical quality was the greatest driver for change.
As an interim report, we can expect a follow-on which will more comprehensively, we are promised, review the path ahead and reforms which Lord Darzi advocates. As you would expect, the report reviewed here, is clear, evidence based and not too ‘spun’.
The NHS has endured, Lord Darzi writes, the most austere decade in its history, while funding for social care has declined almost every year since 2010 - with fewer people getting the support they so desperately need. He supports the premise that it is time for a change. The burden of disease has changed and new technology and scientific breakthroughs will enable us to deliver more effective and efficient care. High quality care is a constantly moving target: to stand still is to fall back.
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