By Elena Siniscalco
[Re: Sunak confronted by patient over nurses’ pay, Oct 28]
On his visit to a South London hospital on Friday, Rishi Sunak was confronted by a patient over nurses’ pay. The government “is trying”, he said; but as the patient rightly said, they need to be trying harder to deliver a stronger NHS. With health care costs skyrocketing, acute health worker shortages and record long waiting lists, Rishi Sunak is faced with the pressure to deliver an effective strategy to improve our nation’s health.
The only way to do that is with a robust approach that focuses on reducing the burden of illness driving the need for care, focusing on prevention. Prevention is always better than the best cure and is a lower-cost approach. But a prevention-based approach will require significant shifts in how and where healthcare is delivered. Changes in incentives and funding flows are urgently needed by the government, regional authorities, businesses, and communities to reduce the healthy life expectancy gap between poorest and richest.
A healthy society is quite literally everybody’s business and not just the NHS and care system’s problem to solve. Sunak must seize the opportunity to shift incentives from disease treatment to health promotion and make better health a social and economic priority. A healthy Britain will result in a healthy economy and a stronger NHS.
Tina Woods
Business for Health
The post Letters: Prevention is better than cure appeared first on CityAM.
