Have you Ever Given any thought to the winds of change blowing around the NHS?

There was a lot of change heralded last week. A new radio soap opera was launched. It’s called ‘Greenborne’. It tells the stories of everyday folk as they learn to live in a post pandemic life. You can listen to it on local radio stations – see here. I don’t think it will dislodge the dominant Archers, which for 70 years has told the stories of everyday country folk, but who knows?

I do know that I’m a man who likes nothing better than getting my shorts on, whatever the weather. Last week an opportunity to change the way I might free my legs emerged – the skirt. Apparently skirts for men are the new thing and have been included in the recent fashion collections of Stefan Cooke, Burberry, Ludovic de Saint Senen (names that don’t mean anything to me, sorry). Covid and working from home has revolutionised the male dress code (suit top, pyjama bottoms). As we emerge from our home offices once more, is the world ready for skirt-wearing men? I think J’s clothes are quite safe, although she does have a very attractive black tartan skirt in her wardrobe, so who knows?

I didn’t quite know what to make of Charles Walker’s speech in the House of Commons last week. I do like all things surreal, but his speech took surrealism to a new level. It was a rather strange protest parody on the price of milk (which we never did find out whether it was too high or not). He stated that in the remaining days of the lockdown, his protest would be symbolised by him walking around everywhere with a pint of milk. Will such surrealism change the voice of politics in the UK, who knows?

We do know that the captain of the stuck container carrier, the Ever Given, in the Suez Canal isn’t Marwa Elselehdar, Egypt’s first female sea captain. Almost immediately it happened social media lit up with the speculation that it must have been her steering the ship. The everyday sexism on social media continues to dismay me. It’s sad, not amusing and I was glad to see others point this out as well. I do feel for the actual and, as yet, unnamed captain. It must feel like that he is living a nightmare almost as big as his ship. We also know that the impact on world trade has been equally enormous, and is likely to continue to be so for some time. Will the work to free the ship and Monday’s big tide be enough to refloat her? – nobody knows.

The Ever Given story absolutely illustrates how vulnerable and exposed world trade is to something as simple as a twitch from Mother Nature. Reading the story, I was astounded by the sheer amount and variety of goods that are transported around the world in this way. I guess, like many others, I have taken for granted that if you can afford it, it’s easy to get whatever you want from wherever you want.

How many of us took full advantage of Amazon’s amazing ‘keyboard to doorstep’ delivery of everything we needed (or thought we did) during the darkest days of the pandemic. I know I certainly did. The parcels kept coming almost relentlessly. In fact, sales soared by some 51% during the pandemic, and Amazon delivered some 1.5 billion packages worldwide. That is a lot of cardboard, perhaps a discussion for another blog, but if you are interested in what this might mean for all of us, have a look here. I know I’m glad we get our own eggs from our own hens.

Amazon was also in the news last week for other reasons. The company announced that it would be expanding its virtual healthcare service (Amazon Care) to all its US employees, and they could have it for free. This is a service that offers virtual visits, as well as face to face primary care visits in the person’s home or place of work. Amazon Care can also send a health care professional to the person’s home for blood tests and other general assessments. It’s an on-demand service that allows people to connect to a doctor via chat or video conference for a consultation. Amazingly in just a few minutes.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I ring my GP surgery for an appointment, it can take many minutes (12 at my last try) to get to the head of the queue, and then I have to listen for a further 2 min 45 seconds of messages and disclaimers, before I connect to someone, not a doctor or practice nurse. They usually tell me they don’t have any appointment slots. Interestingly Amazon have been successfully trialling their service now for some 18 months. Whilst it will be free to Amazon employees (a huge benefit in the US), they plan to offer the Amazon Care service to other companies for a fee. I suspect that this might just be the first dipping of the proverbial toe into the US health care market, a market worth $3 trillion a year. Could we see something like this in the UK, who knows?

Twenty years ago, Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks, in discussing political cultures noted that ‘what happens in the US today will happen in the UK tomorrow’. So, it’s a possibility. Look at the success of Babylon Health UK. In a world where so many of us seek information, make decisions, and communicate using our phones, an effective online, on-demand access to health care service would be the next logical step. During the pandemic, we saw out-patient and GP appointments successfully carried out via video links, we have seen the establishment of virtual Covid wards in the community, and much greater use of data. Even the much maligned Test and Trace service has shown the power of using information differently (albeit at a huge cost).   

There were two other aspects to what Amazon were trying to do that resonated with me and I think reflected the ambitions for change as set out in the recent NHS White Paper. Amazon intends to focus its efforts on the home as a place where care is given. It also wants to reduce the individual and societal burden of disease by improving primary care and health promotion and prevention. I don’t know about you, but these are ambitions I would also like to see realised. Do we need Amazon to help make this happen, who knows, but I think not?