Young people should be encouraged more to stay away from the GP so that the sickest in society can be prioritised, Wes Streeting has said as part of a plan for more personalised medical care in the NHS.
The Health Secretary has been consulting medical staff and members of the public on what should be included in a “10-year plan” to overhaul the health service.
Speaking to The i Paper, he warned that without a better focus on preventing illness rather than simply curing it the NHS could go “bankrupt” as costs continue to spiral.
Streeting said that technology including artificial intelligence would be a key part of helping individuals receive personalised support which would make the service more productive and ease pressure on the major bottlenecks.
One example, he predicted, would be ensuring that people who are relatively healthy can access advice outside of their GP. Streeting said: “If we can modernise the NHS App then I think we can do a much better and faster job of making sure patients get the right care at the right time in the right place.
“So if you are someone who tends to be younger, fitter, healthier you probably won’t need to see the same GP every time you are going in for something.
“If it is a case of being directed to see a pharmacist where they could give you some advice or do some tests using the skills and knowledge available to them, and that then sorts you out without having to go to your GP, well then that frees up GPs’ valuable time to provide that really strong family doctor relationship that will certainly be far more valued by people with ongoing health conditions or people in older age who have got multiple conditions they are contending with.”
He stressed that personalised medicine should have “universal and consistent” high standards but it would result in “different courses for different horses”.
The Health Secretary hosted a summit in London on Friday with patients and NHS staff from across England to swap ideas for the 10-year health plan that is expected to be published in June.
Streeting has promised to get waiting lists down with the help of a multi-billion-pound cash injection, but also to reform how the healthcare system works so that it does not continue to suck up more and more money without providing a better standard of care.
Last month Sir Keir Starmer announced that NHS England would be abolished, with control of the health service passing directly to ministers rather than being managed by what Labour has called “the country’s biggest quango”.
But Streeting told The i Paper: “The 10-year plan can’t just be about reform of the NHS, it’s got to be about our whole approach to health.
“Unless we focus on preventing illness as much as treating sickness, we won’t succeed in bending the curve of cost and demand that if allowed to go unchecked threatens to bankrupt the NHS and put into serious jeopardy what I think all of us are committed to, which is a National Health Service that is a publicly funded public service, free at the point of use so that whenever you fall ill you don’t need to worry about the bill.”
As well as shifting more care from hospitals to the community and making more use of technology, the project is intended to spread the best examples of innovative practices around the country as a whole.
The Health Secretary said it was “a source of enormous frustration” to see some regions and services lag behind for no obvious reason.
Duncan Barton, the chief nursing officer for England, insisted that NHS staff were keen to help drive change.
He said: “What we have to do is make their lives that little bit easier so they can do the things that they are great at, including innovating and finding new ways to care for people.”
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