The health secretary has announced an ‘independent investigation’ into the ‘state of the NHS’, to be led by Professor Lord Ara Darzi.
The findings of this ‘rapid’ investigation, which will be published in September, will feed into a new 10-year plan ‘to radically reform’ the NHS, for which patients and staff will be consulted ‘soon’.
Writing for The Sun yesterday, Wes Streeting repeated his claim that the NHS is ‘broken’ and said an investigation is needed to ‘diagnose the problem’.
Lord Darzi, a former Labour minister who Mr Streeting described as a ‘one of the NHS’s leading experts’, has been asked to produce a ‘raw and honest assessment’ of the state of the NHS.
The health secretary said the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have been ‘instructed’ to share ‘whatever information’ Lord Darzi needs.
He argued that ‘sticking-plasters’ will not fix the NHS, and rather ‘fundamental reform’ is required.
The 10-year plan will be led by Sally Warren, who will be leaving her position as policy director at the King’s Fund, a leading health think tank, to join DHSC.
During his time as health minister, Lord Darzi led an influential national review of the NHS, High Quality Care for All, which aimed to improve accountability in clinical practice.
He also worked on Labour’s GP ‘polyclinic’ model – known as Darzi centres – which was later scrapped by the Coalition Government.
One of Labour’s manifesto promises was to trial ‘neighbourhood health centres’, which seem to resemble the Darzi model, with the aim of improving out-of-hospital care.
Lord Darzi, a surgeon who holds the Paul Hamlyn chair of surgery at Imperial College London, has also previously argued that the GP partnership model is out of date and that GP services should be brought ‘into the fold’ to ‘finally complete the NHS’.
In a statement today, Mr Streeting promised that the Government ‘will be honest about the challenges facing the health service’.
He continued: ‘This investigation will uncover hard truths and I’ve asked for nothing to be held back. I trust Lord Darzi will leave no stone unturned and have told him to speak truth to power.
‘I want a raw and frank assessment of the state of the NHS. This is the necessary first step on the road to recovery for our National Health Service, so it can be there for us when we need it, once again.’
Lord Darzi said that the ‘first step’ to tackling any health problem is to establish a ‘proper diagnosis’, and that this investigation will help to reinstate ‘quality of care as the organising principle of the NHS’.
‘My work will analyse the evidence to understand where we are today – and how we got to here – so that the health service can move forward,’ he added.
Earlier this week, the new health secretary committed to reversing the underfunding of general practice, in his first policy announcement.
And he met with the BMA’s junior doctors committee to reopen talks in a bid to bring an end to strike action.
A version of this story was first published on sister title Pulse.
