Dubbed the Neighbourhood Health Service, the scheme is designed to treat patients nearer home, rather than forcing people to travel miles for outpatient care
Patients will be able to see GPs, nurses, dentists and pharmacists under one roof after a funding boost for hundreds of neighbourhood health centres.
Rachel Reeves tonight confirmed investment for 250 health ‘one stop shops’, starting in the most deprived parts of the country. Dubbed the Neighbourhood Health Service, the scheme is designed to treat patients nearer home, rather than forcing people to travel miles for outpatient care.
It will initially focus on improving access to GPs and supporting patients with complex needs and long-term conditions like diabetes and heart failure in the areas of the highest deprivation.
Years of austerity have eroded healthcare provision in some of the poorest communities where healthy life expectancy is lowest, leaving a postcode lottery on access to GPs and prompt treatment.
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Ms Reeves said: “At the Budget I’ll set out how we’ll deliver on the country’s priorities to cut NHS waiting times, cut debt and cut the cost of living.
“We’re driving down waiting lists by bringing healthcare to patients’ doorsteps and turbocharging NHS productivity with cutting-edge technology.
“Our record investment, combined with ruthless efficiency and reform, will deliver the better care and better outcomes our NHS patients deserve.”
As the programme grows, it will expand to other patients and priority groups. The Chancellor is also expected to pour £300million into NHS tech, to free up staff to spend more time caring for patients and less time on admin.
This will include automating administrative tasks, providing swifter access to patient information, ensuring better staff communication and better coordinated care.
Health Minister Karin Smyth said: “Neighbourhood Health Centres fundamentally reimagine how the NHS works – bringing care closer to home and making sure the NHS is organised around patients’ needs, not the other way round.
“The Chancellor is rightly boosting investment in the NHS after we inherited a health service on its knees – with Lord Darzi’s investigation uncovering a £40 billion black hole.
“But funding will only get us so far. We need to use every measure available to us, which is why we’re leveraging in private investment to construct some of these centres, making the most of all expertise and every tool at our disposal.”
Tonight, the Chancellor attempted to rally MPs at the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting in the corridors of Westminster. She told them politics is a “team sport” as she urged them to support the government as she laid out her three priorities for Wednesday’s Budget.
Ms Reeves said: “Cutting the cost of living, cutting NHS waiting lists and cutting the cost of debt. We’ve increased the national living wage and the national minimum wage. We’ve protected the triple lock, increasing it last year and increasing it again from next April. We have properly funded free childcare commitments.
“We’re rolling out free breakfast clubs at primary schools for all children and extending free school meals to an additional half a million children. But I know that there is more to do, which is why we have already announced a freeze in prescription charges and rail fares. But there is more we can – and will – do.”
And in a defiant message ahead of Wednesday’s Budget, Ms Reeves added she will “back next year and the year after that”.
