The NHS is seen by some as the jewel in the UK's crown and changes are urgently required in order to maintain this position.
The NHS Confederation, who represent the health service trusts, have made recommendations for progressing in 2012 through 2015. The year ahead is seen as key to the £20bn efficiency savings required by the year 2015.
There are cries for modernising the NHS which some believe will safeguard its future. There are groups who feel that hospitals are being far too heavily leaned upon for services that could be carried out elsewhere such as reducing hospital stays where this is right by the patient, putting resources into more community services and more crucially raising the standards of practice.
The public will need to be assured and shown how these changes are to improve the care rather than focussing where cost cutting measures are to be put in place, for "the greater good" it may seem to officials but how will the public react? It seems like a constant carousel of similar ideas with no new revolutionary, game changing ones on the horizon.
Patients are now more than ever looking at private medical insurance, or at least getting quotes, as the NHS seems to be failed by those who run it and the huge cuts it is sizeably forced to make.
Lets hope this nonsensical merry go round stops and those that are in charge take a moment to find a real, quality solution to keep the jewel firmly fixed in the crown.