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The government quickly shelved the suggestion. 15 years later, Labour government’s Wes Streeting is using the same language about a single record for the citizen for life [(The Guardian 2024]). His new name is for “patient passport” and it would be integrated into the government-owned NHS App. But he is not detailing how to achieve this.
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In England, 1 in 17 people has a rare disease [(Donaldson, 2010]): most of these people know more about their situation than most of the doctors looking after them. 25-50% of patients at hospitals are from outside the region [(Patients Know Best research 2024]): the hospital does not have access to the records from outside the region. Long-term conditions accounts for about 70% of the money the country spends on health and social care [(Nuffield Trust, 2024]): what these patients do matters more than what their doctors do.
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Governments account for the majority of health care spending in the majority of countries. In the UK, the publicly owned National Health Service has long dominated accounting for 80% of health care spending. Government spending still dominates countries with majority private providers. Even in the USA, public health spending was 52% pre-Covid in 2019 (up from 44% in 2000) [(World Bank, 2024]). The trend of increasing government funding accelerated during Covid.
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