NHS sent door-to-door to tackle sickness crisis

The Telegraph has reported an army of health workers will be sent door-to-door in a radical NHS scheme to tackle Britain’s sickness crisis.

The scheme is set to be rolled out in 25 parts of England and could form part of an NHS 10-year plan in June.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who convened a national summit on the 10-year plan on Friday, said early versions of the scheme showed “really encouraging signs” in cutting the number of heavy users of services, which he called “frequent flyers” filling up A&E departments.

Under the model, a community health worker is allocated a patch of 120 homes, typically paying monthly visits, they can anticipate need and provide personalised help.

Results from the first pilot scheme in Westminster suggest a dramatic impact, with a 10 per cent drop in hospital admissions over a year, including a 7 per cent fall in those arriving at A&E.

The idea of bringing the model to the UK came from Dr Matthew Harris, a public health expert at Imperial College London who worked as a GP in Brazil from 1999 to 2003. There, the programme has been credited with cutting deaths from common heart conditions by more than a third.

Dr Harris says the fact the CHWWs get to know their communities – typically visiting residents once a month, means they can anticipate what they really need, and provide personalised help, instead of the “big state throwing services at them”.

“It’s much better to have one person do 12 things than have 12 people do one thing each, which just causes fragmentation, confusion and chaos in the system. So this is an efficiency issue,” he said.

Those behind the scheme are pushing for universal rollout, starting with the most deprived 10 or 20 per cent areas, at a cost of around £300 million.

In June, Mr Streeting will launch the Government’s 10-year plan for the NHS. The idea of a “neighbourhood health service” will be central to this.

He has already warned that the NHS faces bankruptcy, and being overwhelmed by demand, without a radical shift of care into the community, and a focus on prevention of ill-health.