A Broken NHS And Why So Hard To Fix

About the show

Nigel Cowley: GP for 40 years. 4 year term as a local councillor.

TALK: Those in charge of the NHS (if indeed they really exist) would argue that Dr Cowley has no qualifications whatsoever for giving this talk. Indeed they would probably argue that the NHS has rarely been in better shape.

They would say he has never been a government minister or a government health ‘mandarin’ or a leader of business or an NHS manager or one of the myriad of consultants bought in to manage change in the NHS or a health economist.

They would look at his CV and note the only experience of relevance was the fact that he served a 4 year term as a local councillor - when to the credit of the local party it spent as much time on the front page of the local newspaper as its national counterpart.
He has however witnessed a myriad of changes to the NHS in his 40 year career as a doctor, the vast majority as a coal face GP. He will take you on a personal and national journey of the ups and downs of the NHS and its now seemingly inexorable decline. He has been witness to some breath-taking mismanagement (it is no coincidence that every major reinvention of the NHS occurs on April Fools Day). On at least 2 occasions governments have scored spectacular own goals, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
He will, for what it is worth, offer some possible ways forward to curing the NHS, although it is unlikely that anyone who has real power will listen.