Institute for Public Policy Research 15 June 2018
- This final report of the Lord Darzi Review puts forward a 10-point plan to achieve bold and long-term funding and reform, as well as a 10-point offer to the public which sets out what the health and care system will be able to offer if this plan for investment and reform is adopted.
- The plan covers, digital infrastructure, R&D, social care, integration of services, simplification of national management structures, investment in staff, transformation funding and longer term funding cycles.
See the Interim Report here.
1. Invest in health, not just healthcare. This means embracing a ‘health in all policies’ approach across government and getting serious about tackling obesity, smoking and alcohol consumption.
2. ‘Tilt towards tech’ to create a digital first health and care system. This means investing in the digital infrastructure the NHS needs, enabling data sharing across the health and care system and embracing ‘full automation’ to release more time to care.
3. Unlock the potential of health as a driver of wealth. This means delivering a significant increase in R&D spending and driving uptake and access in the NHS by re-establishing the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as the ‘innovators gateway’.
4. Make social care free at the point of need. This means extending the NHS’s ‘need, not ability to pay’ principle to social care and fully funding the service as part of ‘new social contract’ between the citizen and the state.
5. Establish a ‘New Deal’ for general practice, mental health and community services. This means creating a new option of integrated care trusts for all out of hospital care and shifting power and funding away from the acute sector.
6. A radical simplification of the system. This means joining up NHS England (NHSE), NHS
Improvement (NHSI), Health Education England (HEE) and Public Health England (PHE by
creating one NHS Headquarters and simplifying commissioning functions into a single
structure – Health and Care Authorties (HCAs) – at the regional level.
7. Revitalise quality as the organising principle of health and care. This means creating a
coherent quality strategy for health and care which rebalances the drivers of change from
‘control’ to ‘improvement’.
8. Invest in the talent of the team. This means ensuring health and care are properly staffed
by creating an integrated skills and immigration policy and providing fair pay for staff
across the health and care system.
9. Provide time and resource to transform health and care. This means creating a fully
funded transformation fund for health and care to allow change to take hold and investing
in capital to provide the building blocks for a 21st Century NHS.
10. Set out a long term funding settlement for health and care. This means ending the ‘feast
and famine’ cycle of funding by returning the NHS to its long run growth trajectory and
‘ringfencing’ National Insurance (NI) increases to pay for it.
