Helen Edward: The NHS is in critical condition – it’s time to rethink it as a logistics business

Helen Edward recently stood as Parliamentary Candidate for Kingston and Surbiton. She is also Deputy Chair for CWO London and CPF London Ambassador.

Free at the point of use, but broken at the point of delivery. That’s the uncomfortable reality facing our beloved National Health Service. We treasure the NHS, but increasingly we hear stories of corridor care, patients waiting twelve hours in A&E, delayed diagnoses, and exhausted staff struggling to cope with an overwhelming tide of demand. As someone who works weekly in a hospital A&E department and has served on the Board of Governors, and with a background in logistics, I see these pressures firsthand.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But to fix the NHS, we must first change how we think about it.

For too long, the NHS has been treated as a sacred cow: beyond criticism, beyond reform – and a bottomless cost burden on taxpayers. But if we dared to see it not as a sacred institution but as one of the most complex logistics operations in the country, we might finally begin to solve some of its most persistent problems.

We can diagnose the real problem: it’s demand.

In logistics and in business, demand is directly linked to price. In the NHS, services are free at the point of use – which, while morally laudable, makes demand effectively limitless. Over time, the scope of health expectations has expanded exponentially to cover IVF to ADHD, autism to addiction, obesity to gender, mental health to dental care, social care to palliative care and the latest demand, assisted dying. Meanwhile, lifestyle-related conditions, an ageing population, immigration and post-COVID complications have pushed the system to breaking point.

Unlimited demand on a limited system is an NHS life support emergency.

So what are the policy proposals that would manage demand logistically?

We must be honest and brave in how we do it but these would certainly be good starting points:

1. Define Clear Service Boundaries – Tighten eligibility criteria for taxpayer funded treatment in certain lifestyle-related or costly overused areas: obesity, smoking and alcohol-related illness, mental health and ADHD, gender dysphoria and IVF.
2. Introduce an Administrative Fee – A modest fee (£10-£30) for GP or A&E appointments would act as a price signal to reduce unnecessary use, while protecting prescription exemption holders and the most vulnerable.
3. Publish a Price List – Let patients and staff see what care costs. Transparency fosters appreciation and more responsible usage as well as offering an income stream for paid medical procedures.
4. Charge Non-Entitled Patients – Those not entitled to NHS care should pay at point of service. Evaluate access for non-UK nationals and use charging to reinvest in core services. Review commissioning entitlements.
5. Raise the Prescription Age – Bring eligibility for free prescriptions in line with the rising state pension age (from 60 to 70) to reflect modern life expectancy.

On top of this we need to be optimising the NHS supply chain because a modern health system should be throughout a smart and lean logistics chain.

• Procurement and National Purchasing Power – Leverage the NHS’s scale to negotiate better deals on medicines, PPE, equipment, and supplies. Eliminate regional duplication. Integrate warehousing and supply chains for just-in-time deliveries to the point of patient care.
• Capital Equipment as a Revenue Asset – High-value technologies like surgical robots, 3D audiology printers, and state-of-the-art diagnostic tools should maximise utilisation to recoup investment and generate income.
• Data-Driven Decisions – Use hospital data to guide investment, staffing, and procurement.

We need smarter triage, early diagnosis, and better flow.

Corridor care has become a tragic symbol of NHS overwhelming demand. But it’s also a patient flow logistics failure caused by bed blocking. Logistics focus on segmenting demand by triage and clinical decision units for quick diagnosis and dedicated pathways on frailty, mental health, and high-risk patients as well as relentless discharge planning with community partnerships.

There is also a lot of room for improving preventive care and community health, after all preventing ill health is cheaper than treating it. We need a logistics-led rethink of upstream health interventions such as,

• FRAIL Strategy Osteoporosis screening for post-menopausal women and bone density interventions to prevent falls, a leading cause of elderly hospital admissions. A single fracture can be the gateway to permanent residential care and the exorbitant costs associated with dependent living.
• Weight management and smoking cessation as core offers in primary care
• Mental health support to avoid emergency escalation

Prevention is logistics, too.

Then there is the newer challenge of IT, Security and AI.

Many NHS Trusts are operating on outdated, vulnerable IT systems that are expensive to maintain and prone to cyberattacks. Investing in resilient, modern digital infrastructure is not a luxury – it’s a prerequisite for safe care.

• Upgrade digital systems and back-end databases
• Embed cybersecurity protocols across the estate
• Roll out AI for analytics, prediction and planning, and integration such as demand forecasting, patient flow modelling, triage prioritisation and sharing customer records. With a manageable level of demand, AI will help hospitals transition from reactive to proactive, saving costs and lives.

We need to create the right Culture within the NHS to not only aim for but want continuous improvement.

Logistics is also about adopting that positive and ambitious culture of continuous improvement borrowed from Kaizen and Lean Management:

• Build Quality Circles at ward level empowering frontline staff to spot inefficiencies and suggest improvements
• Use the CQC’s five domains: safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led as a foundation for improvement

Every ward should be a learning unit. Every department, a testbed for improvement.

In the end, to create all of this, it’s time to be honest.

This isn’t about cold-hearted cost-cutting. It’s about applying proven logistics thinking to ensure that care gets to the right people, in the right place, at the right time. If we continue to treat the NHS as limitless, we risk losing it altogether. But if we treat it as the vital, complex, dynamic logistical operation that it is—we might just save it.

We don’t need to abandon the free-at-the-point-of-access NHS model—but we do need to modernise how it works. Healthcare is logistics. By understanding and applying lessons from other high-demand systems, we can relieve pressure, improve outcomes, and protect what matters most: care at the point of need.

That requires political courage and a willingness to challenge the status quo level of demand. As Conservatives, we believe in value for money, personal responsibility, and helping people to help themselves. The NHS is not immune to these principles. In fact, it needs them more than ever.

If we want to preserve the NHS, we must first be prepared to reduce demand and to transform the NHS with a logistics-led mindset.

This article was prepared from a longer policy submission for the Policy Renewal Diagnostics Project run in conjunction with CPF. We encourage members with deep knowledge on topics which require technical rethinking to submit their ideas.