The health policy disconnect is widening

Amid all the political shenanigans last week, there was I felt quite an important shift in the dynamics around UK health policy.

I have recorded the above piece on what I see as a growing disconnect between the Government, the media and patients on what is going on in the NHS.

Last week was supposed to be all about the National Cancer Plan but this understandably was drowned out by the Mandelson scandal.

However the Government also found itself on the back foot on health:

• The Times reported that the reductions in the elective waiting list were being achieved by paying hospitals to remove patients from the list

• The Health Foundation published analysis picked up by HSJ and the Times that NHS ‘crack teams’ had not cleared waiting lists more quickly, but that again reductions were being driven by removing people from waiting lists

• The Sunday Times reported that thousands of operations were being delayed due to budget cuts

• The National Cancer Plan landed to pieces about the challenges in cancer services, including postcode lotteries in treatment access and workforce hiring freezes

This disconnect between national political ambitions and targets and the reality of service performance on the ground is hurting the Government.

This Government desperately the NHS to be working better, for voters to feel that and to credit the Government for it. Currently they are not.

The Government’s lead on health and the NHS has dropped significantly or been lost altogether depending on which pollster you look at. This is partly a driver for why Labour has fallen so sharply in the polls.

This is both a policy and comms problem. The policy framework for change and reform is confusing and the comms cannot cut through as a result.

The Government needs to move away from ‘old world’ practices and shift gears to something with greater clarity, honesty, purpose and direction.

It could start by:

• Distilling the health reforms into an organised policy framework for change – put it on one side of A4

• Telling a clearer story about the changes you are making to the NHS and why – what is the elevator pitch? What are your priorities and why have you chosen them? What was the start line and what does the finish line look like? Where are you on the journey? What trade-offs are you making? (own them!!)

• Re-balancing, identifying and communicating a small number of measurable improvements across core services for patients and staff that you can link to this story of change

• Showing clearly how new investment is delivering the change in your story (and who this is benefitting)

• Building a cohort of advocates and speakers who support these plans and will publicly do so (don’t just add them to the bottom of press releases)

• Stopping the usual DHSC comms grid and focus, focus, focus (block out anything that isn’t part of the above, it just creates more noise – don’t ‘flood the zone’ with peripheral stuff)

And don’t take my word for it, here’s Dominic Cummings (see bottom of tweet)…whatever you think of Cummings he does know how to read and understand voters….