The NHS At 75, Time For Healthcare Business Model Innovation

Two years ago, we celebrated my mother’s seventieth birthday in the US. All her children were present except yours truly. This was the time when Covid was very much around. I was not prepared to take the chance by flying to the US in the middle of Covid. What would have happened if I caught Covid in the US?

You might be thinking to yourself, the US is not a developing country. If I caught Covid, I was going to be treated in a modern health facility. So, what’s the big deal. Well, I am used to being unwell, going to hospital and being treated without being questioned about the type of health insurance I have. That is the big deal.

I lived in Holland for a few years. So, I know a thing or two about the health insurance business. At least the Dutch will not leave a seriously ill person to die if they were uninsured. The Yanks, I will not put it pass, so I was not prepared to chance it.

One develops such a thought process after living in the UK for a long time. The NHS is free at the point of use. You don’t get rushed to an NHS hospital lying on a gurney, gasping for breath, and instead of attempting to save your life, you get asked the type of insurance you have.

The idea of the NHS being free at the point of use was one of the biggest inventions of the 20^th century. It revealed the Brits decency and respect for human life. But ideology aside, has the NHS lived up to its expectation? Is the NHS really free at the point of use? It depends on your definition of free. Let me outline the current state of the NHS and you can make up your own mind whether the concept of free at the point of use still holds validity.

The Current State of the NHS

As I write this article, junior doctors are on strike over pay. Consultants are due to embark on their own strike soon. Around 7.42 million people are on treatment waiting list. Ambulance wait time is an average of an hour and a half. After arriving in the hospital, people spend over 12 hours on gurneys awaiting treatment. The 4-hour A&E wait time metric has not been met since 2015. Patients wait up to 12 hours at the A&E. More than 13,000 people declared medically fit are stuck in hospitals over a lack of suitable discharge facilities.

So, what is responsible for the NHS’s declined from one of the greatest inventions to patients’ worst nightmare?

Lack of Business Model Innovation

The NHS is plagued with the same malady infecting most healthcare establishments. The lack of business model innovation. Medical science and medical diagnostic technology have evolved beyond our imagination. However, healthcare delivery remains stuck in the 19^th century.

Most of the maladies that plagued humanity in the 18^th and 19^th centuries when the current healthcare business model was developed have been eradicated. The illnesses that plague us today are diseases of affluence that the current healthcare business model was not designed to tackle.

But because those responsible for NHS reform confuse the advancement in medical science with healthcare delivery, they continue to shore up the outdated healthcare business model. Hoping it would miraculously deliver on the NHS’s promise.

Albert Einstein once gave a test to his students. As he left the classroom after administering the test, his assistant asked him, ‘Dr. Einstein was this not the same test you gave to the students last year?’ “Yes” Dr. Einstein responded. “Why did you give the students, the same test you gave them last year?” she continued. Dr. Einstein responded, ‘Because the answers have changed’.

Except the UK government and NHS bosses realise that the answers to healthcare delivery has changed from 75 years ago, the chances of the NHS celebrating another 75^th birthday is very, very slim.