Wes Streeting hits back at 'patronising' pensioner warning over new NHS rollout

Wes Streeting has vowed that “no patient will be left behind” by the planned NHS digital revolution, following concerns that older people may face increased barriers to accessing care. A shift from analogue to digital is one of the key pillars of Labour’s 10-Year Health Plan, which will make the NHS app a “front door” to services. However, Dennis Reed, director of over-60s campaign group Silver Voices, warned this could represent “a locked and bolted door for millions”.

He said: “Use of the NHS App requires a modern smartphone, the ability to download apps, and the physical manipulation skills to handle a small screen, none of which may apply to senior citizens. Our increasingly app-driven society is already excluding many older and disabled patients from receiving the full benefits of services, and this obsession with the NHS App will undoubtedly harm older patients who are unable to access timely interventions when ill.”

Mr Reed, who has previously highlighted the struggles some elderly people face with navigating apps to pay for car parking, urged the NHS to “keep in place efficient alternative means of accessing services”.

Analysis by Age UK last year found that one in three over 65s — an estimated 4.7 million people in the UK — lack the basic skills to use the internet successfully. Despite an increase in older people getting online in recent years, one in six, or 2.3 million, did not use it at all.

Writing in the Express, the Health Secretary insists it is “patronising” to suggest that older people cannot use smartphones, and promises an “army of NHS ambassadors” to carry out training.

He says libraries, community centres, and planned neighbourhood health centres will play a key role in hosting tutorials for less tech-savvy Brits.

Mr Streeting adds: “Of course there are some people who don’t want to use the app to manage their healthcare. That’s OK….by getting more people using the app, it will free up phone lines and face to face appointments for those who prefer them.”

Pointing to the NHS’s founding principle of equal access for all, the Health Secretary adds: “As we bring the health service into the 21st Century, no patient will be left behind.”

Age UK’s charity director Caroline Abrahams said the plans will have been met with a “wide range of responses from older people”.

She said: “I imagine some will welcome it and view it as an added convenience, but those who are not online, who do not currently use tech and who have no desire to do so may well be quite alarmed.

“This diversity of opinion is completely understandable and part of our job at Age UK over the next few years will be, I believe, to try to ensure that no older person is left behind or disadvantaged in terms of their access to healthcare as digital technology takes on a bigger role in the NHS.”

Technology will undoubtedly transform the delivery of healthcare over the next decade, and this is "generally a positive development which we should welcome", Ms Abrahams added.

Calling for greater efforts to help more older people get online without facing cost barriers, she pledged that her charity will be “pressing the Government to co-ordinate a much more ambitious digital inclusion effort than we've seen so far”.

Meanwhile, people who cannot or do not want to use digital avenues should not be “bullied into doing so”.

Ms Abrahams added: “I do hope that we can come up with some more creative ways of enabling older people who are not online to benefit from technological advances in the NHS.

“For example, if you have three significant health conditions, wouldn't it be brilliant if in future you could go to your local practice and sit with your GP in front of a big screen with your three consultants beaming in, and have one conversation about how you are and what your treatment needs to be?

“It would save you having to go backwards and forwards to outpatient appointments, your care would be more joined up, and your GP would be there with you and in the loop about what your consultants think is best for you.

“This isn't science fiction, it should be possible within the next five years, and I am sure there are many other ways in which technology can be our servant in terms of our healthcare, even if we aren't especially digitally savvy ourselves."