To wonder what the NHS will be like in 10 years?

[Makemeanothercupofteaplease]

What do you think it will be like? Will it be restructured, so it is once again the envy of the world? How can that be done?

I don't live in the UK anymore but family and friends I love are there so it is something I think about. The current state worries me. Healthcare in general worries me to be fair as someone with autoimmune conditions, I have good quality care where I am now but in 10 years time will it be affordable...I don't know.

I think medical care in general is becoming precarious everywhere as the best treatments just get more and more expensive. Then we also have anti-biotic resistance and superbugs to factor in.

How do you think the NHS will fare in the future? What will healthcare in general be like down the line?

I don’t think the NHS will exist in 10 years’ time, sadly. It will be private healthcare for the majority with access for those who can’t afford that.

Well, I could see that as a reality in the further years ahead but surely not so soon as only 10 years?

The country isn't prepared for that shift within 10 years. I have loved ones who are barely making ends meet with the cost of living crisis as it is, additional private healthcare costs are unthinkable.

It’s probably difficult to quantify in years but actually, 10 years is quite a long time.

Perhaps a bit leftfield as a comparison, and obviously there are different elements here (some legal) such as the government perhaps having a duty of care re providing a health service, but we weren’t prepared for COVID, didn’t see it coming and we, as a society, just had to deal with it. Of course, I’m not saying that I want to lose the NHS but in my limited experience of using it recently, it shocked me just how overstretched it is.

I think it will very much be like the US; private healthcare financed by the individual through insurance or as an employment ‘benefit’ or a basic/dire need access to healthcare for free for those who can’t afford it.

I think this is one area where AI will be very useful, lots of dr’s time will be freed up by technology that does a better job than a human- analysis test results etc.

It depends whether we have a Labour or Conservative government. If Tory, the NHS will still be very much there, but in a worsened state. Under Labour, I think it will still degrade but not as badly. Labour need to invest in social care. That would take some of the strain off the NHS.

It wont exist... not even in 5 years

Depends on the next 2 General Elections.

There won't be an NHS as we know it in 10 years time. What they will do is systematically run it down until it gets so poor and underfunded that we start going private instead because anything will seem better than what we are left with.

When was it ever the "envy of the world"? I have no time for this fetishisation of the NHS. It is an unwieldy, inefficient beast of an organisation which might have been fit for purpose in the 1950s but certainly isn't now.

It needs a bomb putting underneath it and for us to move towards a European model. Like they have in the Netherlands, France or Germany. This idea that everything will be hunky dory if Labour get in, or if we pour another few billion into the black funding hole is just crazy.

I agree @CoatOfArms when was it the envy of the world??

More people will go private so they will max capacity there and it will have to be a hybrid model.

I actually wish this would be the case but think how slow the NHS has been to adapt to even basic technology. You can't sign up for email alerts over paper letters. No unified systems. NHS staff seem to spend an eternity inputting information which all could be speeded up. Only some GPs have online booking. It's decades behind where technology is in other sectors.

Honestly? I’d like it gone. The only way to save it now is to totally stop. Then start again. I’d much rather contribute financially than have the shit offer now. There is absolutely a better , more cost effective model.

But all the directors and managers need to go. Then rebuild.

Ten years ago everyone said in ten years there'll be no NHS, we'll be like America.

But we still very much have an NHS. I've had amazing treatment this year, so has my mum.

What does your focus group think, OP? Are you working for an agency or for a party themselves? Are you hearing what you want to hear from this demographic?

It will be just through another restructure - these happen about every ten years. It's just been through one now, and the last one was around 2012/3. This one is about more localised care, a move away from centralised assurance processes/directions, and towards more preventative health care.

I imagine the next one will be back to more centralised top down ways of working.

2013, since you asked.

Coat is right. Fgs - let people co pay. There is nothing wrong with the European model. Stop with the USA model. It’s shouted out by people who want to scare us. We cannot keep pouring money in. Have you seen the waste going on within the NHS?

I think it will be GP, emergency and geriatric/palliative care only.

Everything else will be contracted outside the UK.

To be fair, anyone who pays tax is already contributing to it financially yet I doubt few would be happy paying direct for the levels of service they receive, and many people will be paying tax and also paying or being provided with private medical care. My only fear about abolishing it completely is that once again it’ll be the squeezed middle who suffer because those on low incomes and benefits will get free access and those at the top of the tree won’t think twice about paying to go private, and everyone else will have to suck it up and find the cash.

Not Fast - agree too! People dont want to think about their health and take responsibility for it because the good old NHS will sort them out. After all they have paid their taxes - oh wait….

I'd be astonished if it exists.

It's broken and needs change. Shovelling money at it doesn't work.

I know so many people who've had to go private as they can't wait years for treatment and are in pain.

Time for some form of insurance.

As someone who works for NHS I reckon it’ll go one of two ways, collapse and rebuild, or just collapse.

It’s a fucking mess that’s for sure.

The idea of state healthcare is so perfect but the leaps in technology in the last 75 years since it was founded have not filtered in properly.

The trust I work in STILL uses paper notes! We have a medical records library with thousands of blue folders of patient records that in the grand old year of 2023 we still haven’t computerised! The amount of these folders that go missing on a daily basis is frightening, we actually have an email address dedicated to missing notes. Patients are missing surgery because notes cannot be found!

Josh. It does t surprise me! I was a supplier to the NHS for many years. Parts of it are truly in the dark ages and the worst thing is

THEY DONT WANT TO CHANGE AND TRAIN THEIR STAFF WHATSOEVER IN ANY NEW TECHNOLOGIES.

When was it ever the "envy of the world"? I have no time for this fetishisation of the NHS. It is an unwieldy, inefficient beast of an organisation which might have been fit for purpose in the 1950s but certainly isn't now.

It definitely was the envy of the world when I was a child, teenager and uni student.

Other people with my conditions sometimes just die if their parents can't afford treatment. I first realised this when I joined online support groups at uni.

I'm not working for anyone 🙄I have been chronically ill since I was a child, I have loved ones who are medically vulnerable.