“Across GPs, dentistry, mental health, elective care, and social care, people face persistent difficulties getting timely appointments, referrals, treatment, and support.” That’s the top finding from a recent report looking at the state of health and social care in 2026 in England. The report was compiled by Healthwatch, a statutory committee set up under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 as a part of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) responsible for monitoring and reporting on user experiences in health and social care.
The report also revealed that inequalities in healthcare persist, in some cases being little changed from three years ago, and that waiting for care takes a toll on wellbeing. In a bid to tackle delays the government has announced a plan to invest a further £237m in the community diagnostic programme. The funds will go towards expanding and enhancing 32 existing centres, with plans for new centres to open in the coming year in Gorton, Luton, Boston and Bideford.
According to the government announcement, this expansion of the community diagnostic programme will enable people to receive faster and more convenient tests, checks, and scans. Given that the report highlighted the fact that just 35% of people were confident of receiving timely healthcare, that expansion of the programme may well be welcomed by patients. Commenting on the programme Dr Bernie Croal, Royal College of Pathologists’ President, said: “From monitoring heart disease to checking kidney function or diagnosing diabetes, the centres bring diagnosis and treatment into community settings. These centres are also instrumental in tackling health inequalities, delivering improved access to diagnostic testing, reduced waiting times and earlier diagnosis for patients.”
Increasing access to fast diagnostic programmes is only one part of the healthcare story. The Healthwatch report also highlighted the importance of digital transformation in delivering access to care. When done right, digital transformations can help to speed up treatment plans; for example, the digitisation of patient records enables fast access to and transfer of records between health providers. However, the report also cautioned that digital exclusion and poor system integration could lead in some cases to unequal access to care.
Administration and communication failures were also signalled out as potential pathways to poor patient experiences. In particular the report highlighted problems such as missing records, lack of updates and failure to meet accessibility standards. Here again the digitisation of patient records could go some way towards tackling the problem of missing records, whilst systems such as appointment notification could help to improve attendance.
Having said that, the report’s authors say there is a need to offer both technological and traditional care options. This includes offering dual access to services such as the ability to either book appointments online or via a phone call; as well as offering face to face, telephone, or online consultations. This will help to ensure that patients have more choice in the way they interact with their health provider whilst ensuring that individuals who do not have access to fast internet services or who lack confidence online are not excluded from health provision.