The Open University responds to the NHS 10-year Health Plan

Posted on 17 July 2025 • Health, University news

The Government has now published its 10-Year Health Plan for England, focusing on the NHS being ‘Fit for the Future’. Here, the OU nursing team give their topline thoughts on the three main themes.

Hospital to Community

The emphasis on prioritising most care out of or near to home is expected, appreciated and long overdue. At a time when primary care is still in recovery from the impact of the pandemic, lessons need to be learnt as to how to facilitate the best access to information, support and care within each locality, in a way that is accessible and fit for the future. So the emphasis on pump priming the reestablishment of now reimagined health centres is a reasonable aspiration. The advance from being patient centred to patient driven could also be very impactful and empowering if it is meaningfully followed through.

Analogue to Digital

It is encouraging to see an emphasis on increasing and enhancing technological support to streamline the effective delivery of health services at every stage in the process. This aspiration requires realistic attention to issues such as digital poverty and ways to sustain access, as well as protect robust systems through technological support. To not fully address this could risk increasing rather than addressing the issues of inequalities in health that the plan so explicitly seeks to address.

Sickness to Prevention

With an ageing population and increasing prevalence of long-term conditions, an already highly pressurised NHS is buckling under the pressure and exhausting the workforce currently trying to deliver on unmanageable targets. So, progress will have to be defined by a meaningful pivot from being reactive to being proactive, in order to achieve better health outcomes; prevention really is much more cost effective. This ambition demands the need to involve transformation in the shape, size and scale of primary care, because that is where the health promotion needs to be championed. A meaningful and sustained reinvestment in both pharmacies and dentistry are essential elements in enhancing and enabling health within all communities.

Nicola Goodall, Nursing Programme Lead, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, said:

 “The Government plan for the NHS focuses on being ‘Fit for the Future’. It has never been more important than it is now, to focus on enabling fitness, so that opportunities are optimised for people to have a future.

“It is refreshing to see how some of the main barriers to progress are clearly set out in the plan, highlighting where and how these barriers can be challenged.

“Effective education, delivered in an agile and accessible way, will be key to upskilling the NHS workforce to deliver on this plan. We look forward to seeing more detail on this in the forthcoming 10-Year Workforce Plan to be published later this year.”