Next government must be bold to tackle worst NHS crisis ever, says BMJ commission

• Published in: BMJ (Online) 2024-02, Vol.384, p.q284-q284
• Main Author: Iacobucci, Gareth
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Government; Health services; Humans; News; State Medicine
• ISSN: 1756-1833; 1756-1833
• DOI: 10.1136/bmj.q284

The first report of the BMJ Commission on the Future of the NHS (bmj.com/nhs-commission), which launched this week, identified years of constrained funding, workforce shortages, and high demand from an ageing population as some of the key pressure points on the health service.1 The next government should declare a national health and care emergency and urge all parts of society to play their part in helping improve the health, care, and wellbeing of the population, it argued. “If we declare this a national emergency, then that’s the time for people to rally around to make sure that there’s some responsibility on the housing providers, on the educationalists, on the food producers, all the other people who are having such an impact on creating the conditions which have made people unhealthy,” Crisp said. Worst crisis ever Responding to a question from the floor about whether the current NHS crisis was any different from previous ones, Crisp said he thought the scale of the challenge exceeded what had gone before, including in 2000 when Labour launched its NHS plan with large funding increases and targets to bring down waiting lists.2 He said, “Obviously there have been crises [before].