Call for increased focus on primary care investment

At a ‘virtual’ meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Healthcare Infrastructure focusing on the ‘refresh’ of the Health Infrastructure Plan (HIP), four distinguished speakers considered topics including the need to invest in primary care, as well as acute hospital settings, for improved forward planning to afford the NHS greater resilience, and for enhanced healthcare infrastructure in poorer and more disadvantaged communities, ‘to reduce health inequalities’. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Speaking in the online meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on 15 March were Professor Sir Chris Ham, Co-chair of the NHS Assembly, Paul Maulbach, Chief Executive of the Black Country and West Birmingham CCG, Professor Jane Perry, Dean of Health, Sport, and Bioscience at the University of East London, and Richard Darch, CEO of Archus. Lord Bethell, who has recently been elected the Group’s Vice-Chair, introduced the speakers and chaired the webinar. Lord Bethell was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care on 9 March 2020. He is the House of Lords Minister responsible for representing all health matters and legislation in the Upper House, and a former Minister for Technology, Innovation, and Life Sciences.

The first speaker was Professor Chris Ham, Co-Chair of the NHS Assembly, Chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Health and Care Partnership, and a non-executive director of the Royal Free London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Prof. Ham is also Emeritus Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Senior Visiting Fellow at The King’s Fund, where he was CEO between 2010 and 2018. The author of over 20 books, and numerous articles, on health policy and management, he has worked at the Universities of Leeds, Bristol, and Birmingham – from where he was seconded to the Department of Health as director of the Strategy Unit between 2000 and 2004.