The NHS needs you...

The front-page headline of today’s i newspaper is “The NHS needs you – Health Chiefs want army of unpaid helpers to support exhausted medical staff and improve patient care”. A director at NHS England said “We’re actually looking at making volunteers key parts of clinical teams helping them to do what they need to do”.

Volunteering is fabulously rewarding and worthwhile (I do it), and in many organisations it’s a key element of their activity. Many people already volunteer in the NHS, and I’m sure there is scope to increase that number. However, if staff in our most important public service are “utterly exhausted”, shouldn’t this raise more fundamental concerns?

Alongside money, capacity and resources are key issues for the NHS. There is only so much we can achieve via tax rises, and other core services also require a lot more money – social care, education, councils, housing, police and prisons. The money promised in June by Theresa May is below what the NHS requires – the NHS Confederation stated this would “see the service in managed decline”.

Over time, the Health Mutual solution will deliver long-term, sustainable funds for healthcare without raising tax, and give access to immediately available additional capacity.