Tackling the backlog...or...meeting people's needs
As we emerge from the terrible throes of the pandemic, anxiety is growing about the large numbers of people waiting for services.The backlog of people waiting is enormous and compounded by the fact that we will face reduced capacity in the system for some time to come. I wrote about the challenges of delivering essential and life-preserving services during the pandemic in this previous article . Arguably the challenges of tackling the backlog, of meeting the needs of those waiting, are even greater and will require a collective and creative redesign of our systems. None of this is new of course. We have known for some time that our system of healthcare does not always entirely meet the needs of the population. Lack of funding is often highlighted as the reason for this and it is true that investment is needed in some areas, but fundamentally we are still operating in a system which was designed in a different context, a different culture of healthcare, a population with different n