Hospital demand is predicted to rise by as much as 30% over the next two decades – yet Jersey is currently spending less than half as much on preventative care than the UK, it has emerged.
It’s a trend the Health Minister this week told Scrutiny politicians he was looking to reverse – with the prevention budget set to rise next year – amid concerns that preventable illness could “consume” the health service in future.
Stating that the Island must be “bolder” in tackling the causes of poor health, Deputy Tom Binet explained that his department will receive £4 million next year for early-intervention and screening measures, if the government’s spending plans for next year are approved when politicians debate them in December.
The funding, included in the proposed £381 million health budget for 2026, follows warnings in the Director of Public Health’s annual report that Jersey’s ageing population and increasing rates of preventable illness are putting mounting pressure on services.
The report found that demand for GP appointments is expected to rise sharply in the coming decades, with an additional 43,500 appointments a year needed by 2053 – at a cost of around £1.4 million.
At the hearing, health officials told Scrutiny members that the proposed prevention programme aims to tackle the main causes of poor health while reducing pressure on hospitals and GPs.
Public Health Director Professor Peter Bradley said: “The ambition here was underlined by modelling, which showed that people on average have about 20 years of ill health.
“That would require, in the next couple of decades, an increase in hospital bed days of around 30%. That’s the situation we were trying to address.”
He said the work will focus on identifying people most at risk of chronic conditions through health checks, delivering evidence-based prevention programmes, and improving early diagnosis through expanded cancer screening.
“We know that diabetes can be prevented about 80% of the time if people are given the right support,” he added. “That might mean medical advice, medicines and lifestyle changes.
“The other element is about earlier diagnosis, so typically this would be around areas like cancer screening…so things like lung cancer screening and extending the bowel cancer screening.”
The panel also heard that Jersey currently spends about 2% of its health budget on prevention, compared with 4% in the UK and nearly 6% in Canada.
Professor Bradley said the aim is to close that gap over time, supported by better use of digital tools to target vulnerable groups more effectively.
Elsewhere in the hearing, Deputy Binet said the prevention programme was set to receive about a third of its original £12 million bid – which he described as “ambitious” – following “a summer of negotiations”.
“We started with a higher number, and as with all politics, you start with what you want and you end up with what you can get,” he said. “What we’ve ended up with is what we collectively thought was the best way to prioritise the money.”
He described the current plan as “step one” in shifting attitudes towards prevention and said that measures cut from the original bid – such as school-based programmes to encourage healthy habits in children – could return in future.
“Those were about lifestyle interventions at an early stage – tackling children when they’re young, getting people to lead a healthier life,” he said.
“If you get in on the ground floor with kids, you can bring down a lot of those costs all the way through the system.
“What we’re doing here is quite bold, but we’ll need to be bolder as time goes on.
“If we don’t tackle it now, it’s going to consume us.”