Health secretary Therese Coffey has promised a £500 million “down payment” for social care as part of plans to “rebalance” NHS and care funds. Unveiling her new plan for the NHS, Coffee also admitted NHS backlogs would rise before they fall.
Speaking in the Commons, she promised to have a “laser-like” focus on ambulance delays and said pharmacies would be able to prescribe more medications in a bid to free up GP time. As part of her emergency plan for the NHS, the new health secretary has set a new expectation for GP practices to see patients within two weeks. On social care she said: “This £500 million acts as the downpayment in the rebalancing funding across health and social care as we develop our longer term plans.”
Conservative former health secretary, and Commons Health Committee chair, Jeremy Hunt asked Coffey to “rethink this new two-week access target for general practice”. Coffey told the Commons it is on top of commitments to “boost the health and care workforce”, and it will “sit alongside the design and delivery of our forthcoming workforce plan”. Pharmacists will be able to prescribe certain medications rather than requiring a GP prescription under the new plan. In answers to questions from Labour over A&E targets, Coffey said she recently endured a wait of nearly nine hours in A&E as she insisted she remained committed to the target for patients to be seen within four hours.
