The NHS is ready to embrace seven-day working

There is a growing sense of inevitability behind the recent calls for the NHS to be a seven-day service.

‘What surprised us − and should delight Sir Bruce when he publishes his own findings − was how open the respondents were to a seven-day NHS’

This summer, health secretary Jeremy Hunt outlined his expectations for patients to receive the same quality of care at the weekend as they do during the week. And NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh has backed the ambitions, launching a seven-day services forum to try and make it a reality

These hopes for the NHS to provide services when patients need them are not just the latest top-down directive − they are shared by the NHS workforce, as HSJ discovered when we held a online “conversation” with our readers.

Radical ideas

We asked our readers: “What are the behaviour and process changes you believe are needed for the NHS to deliver consistent, financially sustainable 24/7 working?”

‘There is a clear mandate from the service, its patients and leaders to make the NHS provide quality care every day’

More than 1,000 people took part, between them making more than 6,000 contributions. The anonymised format allowed executives, junior managers, clinicians, commissioners and providers to talk openly and without prejudice

What surprised us − and should delight Sir Bruce when he publishes his own findings in the autumn − was how open the respondents were to a seven-day NHS. Rather than spending too much time debating its feasibility, participants accepted that it is essential and set about discussing how to overcome the problems.

There is a clear mandate from the service, its patients and leaders to make the NHS provide quality care every day. The pragmatic and sometimes radical ideas proposed and iterated by HSJ readers provide a rich menu to fulfil that desire.