Nurses appreciate the severity of Con-Dem government attacks on the NHS and there is a weak hint of possible strike action. Nurses are in a particularly awkward position being committed to provide care for patients under the NHS system while that system is getting destroyed around them. To strike runs the risk of appearing insensitive to the needs of patients while perhaps even the act of balloting could hugely raise awareness of the Con-Dems brutal attacks. We need a strong, unified defence and doctors and nurses deserve widespread support.
Norman Lamb doesn’t really disagree with Nick Clegg after all. What a surprise (Not!).
- Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
BBC News – Nick Clegg: ‘Building blocks’ of NHS reform to remain
Deputy PM Nick Clegg says the “basic building blocks” of controversial NHS plans will remain, but changes could be made on how they work “in practice”.
His aide Norman Lamb threatened to quit over the “very risky” pace of change.
But Mr Clegg said Mr Lamb agreed with him and did not want to “reopen the Pandora’s Box” of the basic plan to give GPs more financial powers.
The plans would give GPs in England control of 60% of the NHS budget and let more private firms provide care.
What the cutbacks will mean on the NHS frontline | Society | guardian.co.uk
Don’t expect patients or hospital bosses to be happy as the cost of the NHS shake-up becomes clear, writes Denis Campbell
Andrew Lansley’s future prompts much speculation. Is the health secretary the Cabinet’s dead man walking or simply a well-intentioned NHS reformist who needs some presentational polish? Similarly, is the government’s hastily-conceived new “pause, listen and engage” approach to the planned NHS shake-up a prelude to a major overhaul or just a cynical exercise to keep the Lib Dems on board with warm words but minor changes? The answers, still unknowable, will help decide the fate of the health and social care bill – and perhaps the coalition itself.
But what keeps hospital bosses awake at night is not key elements of the bill such as GP-led commissioning, “any willing provider” or the exact remit of NHS economic regulator Monitor. Other, more pressing, matters do, almost all involving a pound sign. Like the “Nicholson challenge”, NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson’s demand that the service in England saves £20bn by 2015 in “efficiency gains”, requiring 4% annual productivity gains every year – which all the evidence suggests is hopelessly unrealistic. Like the reality of the next four years bringing flat or slightly reduced budgets after Labour’s decade-long cash splurge. It also applies to the 150 or so NHS primary care trusts, which currently commission treatment, and indeed to every healthcare organisation in England. Both have to be contended with at a time when demand for healthcare is growing.
Then there are, as King’s Fund chief economist Professor John Appleby points out, other key financial challenges to be met. January’s VAT increase will cost the NHS £250m, pay increments another £1bn and demographic change a further £1bn a year. Another £200m is going into the populist Cancer Drugs Fund. The transition costs of Lansley’s radical restructuring will be £500m this year alone. Hospitals’ income via the “tariff” payments system is reducing slightly. “All this means that local health budgets are under severe pressure”, says Appleby.
The Nuffield Trust, another health think-tank, adds several other factors for good measure. Medical inflation – the cost of drugs and clinical supplies – is rising faster than general inflation. Many hospitals’ operating costs are running ahead of budget. Demand on them – more people are using A&E, for example – is growing too. You get the picture — which, for the NHS, is grim.
Andrew Lansley’s future prompts much speculation. Is the health secretary the Cabinet’s dead man walking or simply a well-intentioned NHS reformist who needs some presentational polish? Similarly, is the government’s hastily-conceived new “pause, listen and engage” approach to the planned NHS shake-up a prelude to a major overhaul or just a cynical exercise to keep the Lib Dems on board with warm words but minor changes? The answers, still unknowable, will help decide the fate of the health and social care bill – and perhaps the coalition itself.
But what keeps hospital bosses awake at night is not key elements of the bill such as GP-led commissioning, “any willing provider” or the exact remit of NHS economic regulator Monitor. Other, more pressing, matters do, almost all involving a pound sign. Like the “Nicholson challenge”, NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson’s demand that the service in England saves £20bn by 2015 in “efficiency gains”, requiring 4% annual productivity gains every year – which all the evidence suggests is hopelessly unrealistic. Like the reality of the next four years bringing flat or slightly reduced budgets after Labour’s decade-long cash splurge. It also applies to the 150 or so NHS primary care trusts, which currently commission treatment, and indeed to every healthcare organisation in England. Both have to be contended with at a time when demand for healthcare is growing.
Then there are, as King’s Fund chief economist Professor John Appleby points out, other key financial challenges to be met. January’s VAT increase will cost the NHS £250m, pay increments another £1bn and demographic change a further £1bn a year. Another £200m is going into the populist Cancer Drugs Fund. The transition costs of Lansley’s radical restructuring will be £500m this year alone. Hospitals’ income via the “tariff” payments system is reducing slightly. “All this means that local health budgets are under severe pressure”, says Appleby.
The Nuffield Trust, another health think-tank, adds several other factors for good measure. Medical inflation – the cost of drugs and clinical supplies – is rising faster than general inflation. Many hospitals’ operating costs are running ahead of budget. Demand on them – more people are using A&E, for example – is growing too. You get the picture — which, for the NHS, is grim.
The coalition government’s shakeup of the NHS could easily become “the biggest disaster in the history of our public services”, the leader of Britain’s 400,000 nurses has warned.
Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, made the claim in his address to the union’s annual congress on Monday as he set out a powerful critique of the planned radical restructuring in England.
While endorsing the health and social care bill’s key aims, Carter said “the reforms still have a huge number of areas that concern us”, despite recent government concessions on price competition between healthcare providers and its decision to invite a nurse to sit on the new NHS National Commissioning Board.
…
“Despite the honourable principles behind the bill, it could well turn out to be the biggest disaster in the history of our public services, if organisations like the RCN are not listened to now,” Carter told about 2,000 nurses’ representatives gathered in Liverpool.
NHS crisis looms say experts / Britain / Home – Morning Star
The Royal College of Nurses (RCN) warned today that the coalition’s NHS reforms could be the “biggest disaster in the history of our public services.”
RCN chief executive Peter Carter told delegates at the union’s annual conference in Liverpool that the reforms could be devastating if unions were not listened to.
“The Health and Social Care Bill is going through Parliament now and, from a government that promised no more top-down reorganisations, it certainly looks like one to me,” he said.
Mr Carter said that nurses were struggling due to the government’s two-year pay freeze, rising costs and increasing workloads.
He said “never before” had so many nurses talked to him about industrial action.
Speaking to journalists afterwards, Mr Carter said: “We are a long, long way away” from industrial action, and a process would need to be gone through, including balloting members.
He said nurses “would not damage patient care” by simply walking out of hospital wards.
Britain’s nurses yesterday raised the prospect of taking the first industrial action in their union’s history because of anger at government cuts to NHS services.
Nurses would refuse to work more than their contracted hours, take all their allotted meal breaks and decline to fill in paperwork outside their normal job description, under plans being discussed at the annual conference of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Liverpool.
The RCN’s general secretary, Peter Carter, said the union did not have a no-strike agreement, although he played down the threat of a full-scale walkout among its 400,000 members.
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