{"id":2522,"date":"2018-08-04T15:22:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T13:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/cgi-bin\/weblog_basic\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2018-08-04T15:23:51","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T13:23:51","slug":"conservative-policy-forum-health-social-care-bcip-response-3-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/?p=2522","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Policy Forum: Health & Social Care – BCiP Response 3\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Group name: British Conservatives in Paris<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 How has your experience of access and care in the NHS changed<\/strong> in recent years? \u00a0<\/strong>
\nOne of our members with recent direct experience of hospital services was full of praise for response time & general professionalism encountered.
\nAnother suggested discharge of patients from hospital could take place too quickly.<\/p>\n

2. Given the profoundly different landscape of 21st-century healthcare compared to when the NHS was founded 70 years ago, what should the role of the state be?<\/strong>
\n\u201cThe state role should be to ensure a better synergy between the public and private sector, encouraging the development of a deeper and, therefore, cheaper complementary insurance market for private healthcare to enable more companies and individuals to choose this option.\u201d
\nA major overhaul in the way the NHS is funded is necessary.<\/p>\n

3. What more could be done to support individuals and families to take more control of their own health and wellbeing? How might we shift from a system based on treatment to prevention of disease?<\/strong>
\nHealth issues should be included in the curriculum of all pupils.
\nParents should be encouraged to bring up their offspring with a healthy lifestyle (cf diet, sports).
\nOne member: families should be required to \u201cinvest more in the care of the elderly\u201d.
\nPublic awareness of health issues should be heightened through recourse to various media as well as through actions in hospitals, schools, employers (eg distribution of leaflets).<\/p>\n

4. How might we help people to use the NHS responsibly, e.g. not attending A&E for issues that a GP or pharmacy can clearly resolve? How might we reduce the costs associated with the 1-in-15 patients who miss their appointments?<\/strong>
\n\u201cLarger and combined GP and pharmacy practices could allow 7 days a week working, and more opportunity for people to secure appointments rather than being forced to go to A & E.\u201d
\n\u201cOperating an on-line appointments service would allow maintenance of a blacklist for serial cases of missing appointments and introduction of a refundable financial penalty when booking future appointments.\u201d
\nRaise awareness of the sort of problems that can be resolved through a GP or pharmacy.
\nOne member: make the first \u201cport of call\u201d an online advisory system.<\/p>\n

5. How could we further raise awareness and tackle the stigma associated with mental ill health?<\/strong>
\nInform the public including re recent developments in practice & understanding (eg re depression) \u2013 including through television, social media, educational institutions, even employers.
\n\u2026 also re the (significant) numbers of people involved; and cases of successful treatment\/overcoming of problems.<\/p>\n

6. What kinds of NHS services do you think could be put online\/digital rather than traditional face-to-face?<\/strong>
\nInitial sorting exercises?
\nAppointments, repeat subscriptions?
\nOne member expressed reservations about recourse to the digital \u2013 out of a concern that failures of communication on important items might occur.<\/p>\n

7. What more could the NHS do to encourage people to want to work for it? What sorts of practices do you associate with really good employers in other sectors, which the NHS should adopt?<\/strong>
\nTry to provide for flexible & reasonable working hours at least for those for whom these considerations are important.
\nWork to develop a professional ethos including through encouragement of suggestions, & through better remuneration (not to mention ensuring professional conduct & due mutual respect eg between doctors & nurses).
\nAddress practical concerns such as the cost of transport\/parking\/accommodation as related to the location of the hospital etc in question.<\/p>\n

8. How might we continue to fund sustainably a growing NHS?<\/strong>
\nA separate & clearly NHS-labelled tax
\nMore recourse to private insurance complementary coverage: reference to the French model would be instructive & helpful in this regard.<\/p>\n

9. As the NHS budget grows, what health services or treatment areas should be prioritised?<\/strong>
\nMore time should be devoted to initial point of entry visits to the NHS to ensure issues are identified up front.
\nTo provide relief to the system, tasks which can properly be assigned to nurses\/social care workers should be so allocated.
\nPreventive medicine should be developed & accentuated.<\/p>\n

10. What could be done to raise awareness among working age adults about the risks of future care costs? How should we fund the need for increased social care<\/strong>?
\nAn explicit separate (\u201cring-fenced\u201d) tax would help.
\nSimilarly a local \u201cring-fenced\u201d tax for social care would draw attention to these issues.<\/p>\n

11. What should be the guiding principles for Conservatives in making these decisions?<\/strong>
\nBe lucid & rigorous: eg benchmark against other comparable countries\/systems.
\nRespect for the inherent dignity & worth of each human bein.g
\nAccessibility.
\nOpenness to innovation.
\nOpenness to a role for non-state actors.<\/p>\n

12. Is there any other question you think should have been asked or observation you would like to make?<\/strong>
\nMore in the way of comparisons to other countries would have been both interesting & illuminating.
\nThe importance of cross-party thinking\/consensus-building on such fundamental issues would have deserved some attention.
\nPharmaceutical product pricing issues could have usefully been addressed.
\nThe needs of certain specific groups (eg the homeless) might also have been addressed.<\/p>\n

FEEDBACK ON<\/span> PAPER<\/strong><\/p>\n

What did you find useful?<\/strong>
\nThe international overall ranking chart
\nIndications on the evolution of the health situation (eg improvements wrt youth smoking, drinking, unwanted pregnancies).<\/p>\n

What did you not find helpful?<\/strong>
\nOverly broad and optimistic policy declamations not particularly helpful in coming to grips with the issues.<\/p>\n

Do you have any suggestions for how we might improve future briefings?<\/strong>
\nThis brief was of good quality.
\nMore and more in-depth comparisons with other countries \u2013elsewhere in Europe, elsewhere in the \u201cAnglosphere\u201d or anywhere else\u2013 would be both stimulating and relevant from a policy assessment perspective – & this would apply for many different subjects.<\/p>\n

CPF 18-3 Response – BCiP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Group name: British Conservatives in Paris 1.\u00a0 How has your experience of access and care in the NHS changed in recent years? \u00a0 One of our members with recent direct experience of hospital services was full of praise for response time & general professionalism encountered. Another suggested discharge of patients from hospital could take place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[368,396],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cpf-health-social-care-bcip-response-03-2018","tag-conservative-policy-forum","tag-health-social-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservatives-paris.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}