A week of women on top

You know you are getting old, when you finish your conference dinner and don’t stay either for the dancing, or a post-conference stroll to the late-night bar with colleagues. This was me last week. I was back in my hotel room before 10pm. I was attending the NHS Providers annual conference. It runs over two days and was held in Liverpool. There were some excellent presentations from fellow NHS colleagues from across England. In between the plenary sessions, there were also more informal talks from organisations, mainly supplies of goods and services, who presented partnership projects and so on.

Despite my lingering cold and cough which, as I write this, is still making me feel under the weather, I really enjoyed the conference, the networking and the venue. Once again it was Samira Ahmed who was the conference chair. I’m not a great fan of hers. Although she is an award-winning journalist and author, and can ask the most penetrating of questions, I feel she somehow fails to connect with the audience.

Someone who did connect was Victoria Atkins, our brand spanking new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care - the fifth in the last two years. She wasn’t physically in the room, but had sent a pre-recorded video. Sounds crass perhaps, but it wasn’t. Victoria’s tone was much more gentle, positive and encouraging than her predecessor[s]. Although she may not be in post for too long, given there is a general election looming, there is still much that she can do – starting off with resolving the doctors’ industrial action asap. This was something she absolutely saw as a critical first task, which was very encouraging to hear. But there is so much more that requires addressing. The NHS is contending with significant pressures from all sides. A tired and often burnt-out workforce, with massive vacancies still to fill (125,000); increasing demands across all services (October saw more than 2.2 million people attending A&E departments); a post-pandemic long waiting list legacy (nearly eight million people); and of course, continuing financial pressures (including a need to revolutionise capital funding across the whole NHS). It is a huge ‘to do’ list for sure.

Victoria also noted that she would need to work across the various government departments, if health inequalities are to be addressed and thus reduce the demand on health care services. Likewise, the acute sector must find ways to shift more of its resources to primary and community care, so that people can be better supported in more appropriate settings and ideally closer to home. I heard some encouraging presentations where people were doing just that, and we were also treated to a full-on Tigger performance from Amanda Pritchard, Chief Executive of NHS England.

She was on fine form for sure. Amanda was passionate, challenging, well-informed and quoted, by name, many folk that she had met over the past year who were doing incredible things in making a difference to others. It was a stellar performance by someone demonstrating the leadership qualities so needed in a world challenged by so many inter-related and seemingly intractable problems. She is consistent in her approach as well – look here at her unpacking the often-misunderstood concept of productivity to the Houses of Parliament Health Committee last week. Simply patience personified.

Wes Streeting, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, speaking after Amanda, cautioned us that we were in danger of making her Louis XIV – ‘l’etat, c’est moi.’ Yes, I had to look it up too – still not sure I understand what Wes was meaning, other than if we keep increasing the funds for the NHS, and the NHS continues to push the boundaries of what a healthcare system should be doing, the NHS represented here by its figurehead Amanda, will become the State.

Clearly, there is room for transformation and reform, but please, please not any more structural reform. We have had enough. And yes, there are things that we need to address to make best use of the resources we already have to keep services safe and of a high quality; something another speaker touched upon in her presentation. This was the wonderfully calm, confident and articulate Margaret Heffernan. I’m ashamed to say I had never heard of this amazing author before. She held me spell bound as she took the audience through concepts of ‘wilful blindness’, ‘organisational conformance’, ‘whistleblowing’ and why the NHS appears unable to learn from the mistakes of others, even when these are set out clearly in extensive reviews. It was powerful stuff and I have put a couple of her books on my Christmas present list to Father Christmas.

However, my last word goes to another woman, one I have never met and who wasn’t at the Liverpool conference. This was Casey McIntyre, who died seven days ago from ovarian cancer. Her legacy was setting up a fund that would help pay off the medical debts of others in the US. It is estimated that 100 million Americans are saddled with a total of $195 billion in medical debt. The US does not offer universal health care for all. Every $100 raised in donations, funded through her RIP Medical Debt’s website, will go on to alleviate $10000 of medical debt. So far, her appeal has raised nearly $150,000, which will cancel out nearly $15 million of medical debt for others. Casey died too soon. Like all the women I have encountered this week, Casey will continue to make a difference to the lives of others, and that is a legacy to be proud of.