Here's my latest column for the Romford Recorder:
The NHS turns 70 on 5 July, and as we approach this big institutional anniversary questions confront us about how to improve health services, care for our ageing population, and take advantage of new technology as we go forward. This will all cost money, and the government is actively planning how best to put the NHS on a long-term, sustainable financial footing.
Taxpayers will need to be convinced that extra resource will not be wasted, and one of the keys to this will be the successful integration of social care with health services. With the highest proportion of elderly residents in London, Havering will be confronting these questions sooner than other boroughs and is keen to pioneer a fresh approach.
To keep pressure off Queen’s Hospital, we need to get local primary care right. In my constituency, I believe this will involve getting a larger-than-planned medical facility on the St George’s Hospital site in Hornchurch. I have met the local NHS Trust and council to discuss how to achieve this, and asked questions in parliament about reinvesting proceeds from the sale of NHS sites straight back into new facilities rather than seeing cash go into the Treasury’s pot.
More care will need to take place in the home and community as well, and I recently visited Tapestry, a wonderful facility in Hornchurch for dementia sufferers, to see how they are developing a care model that meets the seven criteria set out in the Health Secretary's Social Care Challenge. We need also to build adaptable homes that can meet the needs of people with disabilities or changing mobility over the course of a lifetime. In a recent meeting at No 10, I raised the idea of a Healthy Development challenge which would see any new housing built on NHS sites specifically designed to integrate new health technologies and provide green space and community hubs to combat isolation and encourage healthy lifestyles.
There is much work to do but we must use the celebration of the NHS’s 70th as the catalyst to plan how we provide high-quality, patient-centred care long into the future.