What if the hospital of the future isn't actually a hospital at all?

The NHS is creating something called NHS Online. A new national health service provider, with its own chief executive, its own board, and an ambition to deliver millions of specialist appointments without patients necessarily setting foot in a hospital. It's an intriguing proposition. But it also raises some pretty fundamental questions and Steve's guest this week is the person charged with making it happen, Dame Caroline Clarke.

Steve and Caroline discuss whether NHS Online genuinely transform how the NHS delivers care — or is it simply creating another organisation to do what the existing NHS should already be doing?

And will success mean NHS Online has become one of the biggest providers in the country, or that the rest of the NHS has caught up and we no longer need a separate organisation? Plus, the NHS already has serious workforce pressures as hospitals are struggling to staff existing services. So where exactly is NHS Online going to find the clinicians to staff a whole new national provider?

Oh and the pair compare their dogs recent visits to the vet - and what NHS Online can learn from veterinary medicine!

NHS Online Trust

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