A 7 day a week NHS – is it workable or effective? NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh pledged this week that patients will receive the same level of treatment seven-days-a-week by March 2017. In an interview with the Sunday Times, he said: “The NHS is owned by the people of this country. It needs to respond to society’s demands and it is quite clear that the people of this country want us to give considerable thought to how we can improve the services at the weekend. My sense is that most clinicians get it.” NHA’s Dr Guy Baily says: “We would be supportive in principle of 7 day a week working but are concerned about the detail of how this would be achieved and would want to see evidence that it will provide better patient care. As is the case with everything in health care, there is no simple answer. What exactly does 7 days a week working mean: hospitals offering a full team of doctors, surgeons, nurses and the diagnostic and support services to back them up? That would require a huge injection of funding and staffing. If the existing 5 day workforce is to be spread over 7 days, then we’d need evidence about the impact on patient outcomes during the depleted 5 day week. At the moment, the evidence of benefit is all about the acutely ill. It’s also important not to confuse the call for 7 day a week working with the call to increase out of hours access to GPs. As we know, there is already a problem with awareness of out of hours GP services. A recent survey [ bbc.co.uk/news/health-28243491 ] showed that one in four people had not heard of out-of-hours GP services. This clearly needs to be addressed. Proposals to locate GP services at A&E departments is another idea that should be investigated as a way of signalling the availability of GPs out of hours and to help reduce the pressure on emergency departments.”
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 12:43:18 +0000
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