NHS may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, says Britain's top doctor

[WestVirginiaRebel]

UK Daily Mail:

The NHS is ‘not fit for the future’ and unless it undergoes radical change it may be forced to abandon free healthcare for all, in the future, the service's top doctor has warned.

 

Medical director of NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh said the NHS must become far less reliant on hospitals and needed a ‘complete transformation’ of the way it operates.

Sir Bruce told the Guardian: ‘If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not fit for the future.’

GP surgeries need to be given more resources to cope with the pressures of demand and tight budgets, he added.

In order for the NHS to keep itself sustainable, he said more services need to happen under the same roof – for example diagnostics tests and an expanded range of treatments at their GP surgery.

Sir Bruce added: ‘If not, we will get to a place where the NHS becomes unaffordable and we will have to make some very difficult decisions which will get to the very heart of the principle of the NHS and its values.

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Ah, yes-the value of the medical queue...