NHS
I am a Doctor working at the RVI Newcastle in Clinical Pharmacology Therapeutics and Toxicology. The NHS is now going through its toughest test in its entire history, we have a set of demographic issues that coming at the NHS that will test it to its limits over the next 10 years, after this the pressures will ease. We have a large cohort of older people needing health care. This age band is the largest user of health care services. To make this pressure more difficult this is happening in every advanced country around the globe causing intense competition for trained staff. We note that medically trained staff have changed country of practice more easily than any other throughout history. My experience of the NHS leads me to believe that the NHS will meet this challenge better than any other advanced health care system.
It is important to note that the Mayor will have no direct control over local health and social care services, but that does not mean there are not levels the mayor can pull to improve the situation.
To meet this challenge we must radically start to do more with the resources that we currently have. Throughout my career both as a Pharmacist and a Doctor I have worked along side many Health Care Assistants. Many of whom have expressed the wish to train as a fully qualified nurse. The barrier to this has been the loss of income whilst they train. Nurses are now moving into highly skilled practitioner roles with the support of their Medical colleges. If we can increase the skills and abilities of the staff we already have in the NHS it will allow us to provide more care with the same resources. To this end I will be seeking a Mandate to provide Nursing bursaries to HCAs working in the North East NHS to train as nurses.
North East Social care convention. As Mayor I would convene (one of the powers of the Mayor) a group to work on the future of social care in the North East. This could be used to frame the future of social care in the region. Middlesborough council has reached the point where 82% of the council budget is used to fund social care. This problem is coming to all UK councils over the next decade. The central government will have to act to reform it, in my view in the the period of the new government after the general election this year. At which point the North East will have its plan to negotiate how this will be.
Health outcomes are not just dictated by medical care. An important measure of health is prevention. One of the key diseases to prevent is obeisity. For England alone, Public Health England published data in May 2017 indicating that 63.8% of adults in England had a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or over with the most overweight region being the North East, where 68% of people were overweight. I would open a convention to bring a joined up plan for public health reduction in north East obeisity levels.
Access and best use of healthcare is not just about your local GP or Hospital service, it is also about your skills in interacting with those services. In some parts of the Northeast 25% of communities are functionally illiterate. This greatly reduces there ability to get the best from NHS services and also their wider Life outcomes. I would convene a regional literacy body to plan a response to this challenge an improve literacy throughout the region.
The other resource that I am keen to develop is the NHS DATA resource. AI can now be used to read and report X-ray images. We are currently allowing large, mostly American companies to use our NHS data to train these reporting AIs. In the future we are most likely going to pay these companies to use the machines developed on our DATA. When we have had other national assets we have developed those resources with national campions: coal oil gas and water. I am seeking a mandate to work with North East NHS trusts and other local organisations such as NHS Digital to develop this technology as a company owned by our local people.