NHS news review

Spread the love

NHS news review:

A protest by doctors in York.

HospitalDr reports on the actually widely known outsourcing of NHS treatment under Labour to reduce waiting lists. Private companies were paid regardless of whether they actually did the operations.

Cuts to Diabetic Specialist Nurses adversely affects treatment of Diabetes.

Staff cuts at Epsom General Hospital.

A claim that coalition conflict is damaging the NHS.

Guardian Comment is Free praises Nick Clegg. I suggest that it is important to realise that Clegg is not outright opposing competition in the NHS or the issue that the Health Secretary should provide a comprehensive healthcare system. Clegg has until recently been a wholehearted supporter of this bill. We could do with a fact check as to whether Clegg & Co are complying with the resolution of their Spring Conference. I suspect that they are not. Interesting comments to this article.

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.

Health cuts protesters march through York streets (From York Press)

A MARCH organised by York doctors concerned about NHS reforms took place in the city centre at the weekend.

About 150 people worried about the scale of the Government’s NHS changes attended the protests, organised by Defend Our NHS York.

The march made its way to Parliament Street where the speakers included Baroness Haleh Ashar, a member of the House of Lords and professor of politics and women’s studies.

Protesters were joined by shoppers and tourists when speeches were made by the fountain in Parliament Street followed a chorus of “three cheers for the NHS” led by Dr James Chan.

Speaking to the crowd, Dr Chan, who is based at York Hospital, said: “We are here to stop these cuts because they are going to destroy the NHS.

“This is York’s voice against these reforms, which are the wrong plan at the wrong time, and you are all NHS heroes.”

Baroness Afshar said “There are times when the public knows best, and this is one of those times.

“These reforms make no sense and what we want is more transparency.

“I don’t know any GP who supports these reforms because they do not have the expertise and they do not have the information.

“It is nonsense from beginning to end, so I urge you to please, please protect our NHS.”

£500m wasted in private treatment centres for NHS » Hospital Dr

Private firms were paid millions for operations that never took place in overly generous contracts drawn up by the Department of Health, in a Labour plan to cut waiting times and improve choice.

The independent providers – ISTCs – received more cash for their buildings when contracts came to an end, and were even paid compensation when a second wave of clinics was cut back, a study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found.

Another part of the £1.5billion scheme intended to allow busy workers to see doctors near offices – or polyclinics as they became known – but the new walk-in centres were under-used and most are closing down.

As controversial reforms to the NHS will provide even greater opportunities for private providers, it is feared that more public money will be wasted on similar projects to the doomed Independent Sector Treatment Centre initiative.

Diabetics are put at risk as NHS cuts hit specialist nursing posts | Society | The Observer

The number of diabetic specialist nurse (DSN) posts unfilled across the service has doubled within a year. A survey of 385 hospital trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) by Diabetes UK found that 218 jobs were vacant last year, even though the number of people with diabetes is rising by 150,000 a year.

“At a time when numbers of people with diabetes are increasing, a decrease in the number of diabetes specialist nurses is very concerning,” said the charity’s chief executive, Barbara Young. “This will mean longer waiting times for specialist support, more unnecessary amputations, more people losing their sight and far poorer health outcomes. This is simply not acceptable.”

The research also reveals that the proportion of DSN posts lying unfilled because of cost-saving programmes had risen to 43% – up from 34% in 2009. PCTs and hospitals in England have increasingly been reducing their staff and cutting back on the services they provide as they struggle with the demands of a £20bn NHS efficiency drive, flat budgets and rising costs. The new findings confirm a growing tendency among bosses of cash-strapped NHS organisations not to replace specialist nurses – who also help patients with cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and other conditions – when they retire, move on or are made redundant. However, these nurses are popular with patients and their families, have a proven record of clinical success and an ability to save the NHS money by helping patients stay at home rather than in hospital.

BBC News – Epsom and St Helier NHS savings put 115 jobs at risk

An NHS trust with hospitals in Surrey and London has set out savings plans that could see the loss of 115 posts including 26 doctors.

Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust has begun a 90-day consultation with staff and unions.

The trust said it wanted to save £18.7m by March 2012 but it would still be left with a £19.3m deficit at the end of the financial year.

The public sector Unison has not yet commented on the savings plans.

Coalition must resolve divisions over NHS, says King’s Fund | Society | The Guardian

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been told to end their public “arm-wrestling” over the NHS because their divisions are worrying health professionals.

They should resolve the coalition’s deepening difficulties on the issue and make the service’s future clear as soon as possible.

The sharply-worded intervention in the increasingly fractious debate between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats comes from Prof Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund health thinktank and a member of Downing Street’s “kitchen cabinet” on health policy.

“These arguments between the political leaders are worrying and unsettling people in the NHS. If you are running a hospital or primary care trust or pathfinder consortium of GPs you are now very unclear about the direction that the government is going in on these reforms,” Ham said.

“Everything is back in the melting-pot. We are worried about the adverse effects on the NHS if this current uncertainty continues much longer.”

NHS shakeup: From malignant to muddled | Comment is free | The Guardian

*

Nick Clegg is making a real difference. These are not common words to read these days, and yet they are becoming hard to dispute with the stalled English health reforms. It is true that the deputy prime minister would be better placed to claim credit if he had not initially nodded Andrew Lansley’s bill through, and true, too, that not all the sweeping concessions he now demands fit with the scepticism about the NHS he has sometimes shown in the past. Nonetheless, Mr Clegg has responded decisively to his party’s democratic will, and is training his sights on the heart of the Lansley plans.

First, he drew a red line around the crucial clause that tasks the regulator with “promoting competition”, and he has now done the same with the legislative invitation for “any qualified provider” to take on the NHS. The deputy PM must now apply a third veto to the unacceptable plan to allow private firms to discharge the core public function of spending health service money. He will then have removed the three greatest drivers of privatisation from among the 80-odd clauses that create an NHS market. Assuming, of course, that he can strong-arm the Conservatives into agreeing. He can afford no compromise. Savaged in Scotland, ravaged in the referendum and trashed in town halls, Mr Clegg retains a grip over his parliamentary party that surprises many outsiders. To keep it, however, he simply has to win this fight.

One reason to be optimistic is that the tide of opinion seems to have decisively turned. Marketising medicine had been steadily becoming entrenched as the orthodoxy, ever since Tony Blair made it his millennial mission. The bust-up over the bill, however, has made the whole approach controversial again. Suddenly Labour’s John Healey, who spent a lonely autumn developing all the criticisms of the Lansley blueprint that medics and Lib Dems now voice with such passion, concedes that his own party wrongly pursued “competition for its own sake” through overpriced and underutilised private treatment centres.

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Nick Clegg is demanding the following changes to the Destroy the NHS Bill: These are are from a paper from Clegg to Prime Minister Cameron. It’s immediately noticable that there is not a demand that the Health Secretary continues to be responsible for providing a comprehensive health service – the Bill relieves the Health Secretary of that responsibility.


Clegg demands health reform changes as price of Lib Dem support – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

  • * “We must ensure that GPs only get involved in commissioning decisions once they are ready and willing”
  • * “The removal of any suggestion that we are pursuing a dogmatic obsession with competition [rather than] the best healthcare system in the world”
  • * “Preventing the cherry-picking of services by private providers to make sure NHS providers are not needlessly pushed into financial trouble and NHS research and training can thrive”
  • * “Enhancing governance and local accountability so decisions are transparent to all”

Clegg’s paper also reads “It is clear that the NHS does need to be updated if it is to meet patients’ needs and provide world class health care in the future. But the reforms as originally set out would not achieve that goal, would not protect and sustain our NHS and have clearly very little support among NHS staff or the wider public. I will not ask my parliamentary colleagues to support legislation on the NHS until I am personally satisfied that the reforms have been substantially changed to ensure our NHS is secure for the future.”

Without the Health Secretary continuing to be reponsible for providing a comprehensive health service, the NHS is not “… secure for the future” and is to be abolished.

This article is a very good summary should you need to get up to date on the proposed changes.The NHS Bill: take action on an unprecedented pause | openDemocracy

Increases in waiting times are blamed on cuts

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.Health Service.

Clegg demands health reform changes as price of Lib Dem support – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

Nick Clegg has warned David Cameron he will not ask Liberal Democrat MPs and peers to support the Government’s health reforms unless they are “substantially changed”.

In a paper sent to the Prime Minister and seen by The Independent, Mr Clegg demanded four radical changes to the NHS and Social Care Bill during the “pause” the Government has called as it tries to allay fears about the reforms.

He warned that ministers must kill the impression that they have a “dogmatic obsession with competition” inside the NHS. And he said GPs should not be forced to commission services until they are ready – which would mean abandoning the Government’s April 2013 deadline for this to happen.

Mr Clegg’s strongly worded demands reflect his determination to claim credit for the changes expected to be announced next month as he seeks to convince his party and the public that the Liberal Democrats enjoy real influence on a key policy area.

The NHS Bill: take action on an unprecedented pause | openDemocracy

Professor Wendy Savage argues that the pause in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, which claims to reform the NHS, is just a cynical PR exercise — but citizens should exploit it and act now to save the NHS.

The white paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ was published in July 2010. The 6000 responses to the flawed consultation have not been published but many, if not most, of the responses were critical of the Bill. The Bill had it first reading on 10th January. Its second reading on 31st January was passed by a majority of 86. Voting was strictly on party lines with Labour voting against the Bill and coalition MPs voting for it — apart from one Lib Dem, Andrew George, who abstained.

NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors | Society | The Guardian

Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.

New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.

In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.

Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise.

NHS chiefs ‘care more about costs than lives’ – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

Health service chief executives care more about managing their budgets than saving the lives of their patients, the head of the country’s medicines watchdog said yesterday.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), said NHS managers would prefer that some new drugs were not invented at all so they wouldn’t have to pay for them.

He was backed by Sir John Bell, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, who described the NHS as a “repulsive force to innovation”.

Speaking in his capacity as head of the Academy’s working party on health research, Sir Michael said: “The traditional attitude of an NHS chief executive when he hears there is a new drug [which] may save lives but is going to cost him money is: ‘Oh my God another new drug, another hit on my budget and I really wish that the company who manufactured it had never done so.'”

Lansley guarantees cancer networks (From Your Local Guardian)

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has guaranteed the future of key teams of cancer experts after heavy criticism that his NHS reforms would put them at risk.

In a U-turn arising from the Government’s “pause” on the widely criticised Health and Social Care Bill, he announced England’s 28 NHS cancer networks would be funded beyond 2012.

Previously he has refused to guarantee their future, despite criticism from cancer campaigners and doctors, saying it would be up to the proposed new GP consortia to decide whether to commission the networks’ expertise.

The networks, consisting of up to 15 cancer specialists, provide GPs and hospitals with targeted advice and support on improving care.

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

NHS news:

Nick Clegg has split from his coalition partners on the role of the health regulator, Monitor.

Clegg also seems to be having a dig at his coalition partners:”People get confused when one day they hear politicians declare how much they love the NHS and the next they hear people describing themselves as government advisers saying that reform is a huge opportunity for big profits for health care corporations.”

Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Chief Executive Phil Gray claims that the destroy the NHS bill always intended to turn the NHS into a state insurance provider.

Cameron distances himself from his adviser Mark Britnell after remarks about turning the NHS into a “state insurance provider, not a state deliverer” of care.

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.

Clegg: NHS regulator must work on co-operation not competition | News

Nick Clegg today demanded a concession in the NHS reforms by saying that an official regulator should promote co-operation rather than competition between health providers.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s intervention piqued some supporters of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, who said his plans had always been focused on “quality” rather than price.

He also criticised David Cameron at a private meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs for declaring his “love for the NHS” while taking advice from people talking up the potential for private profits. Mr Cameron was said to be relaxed at the comments made by his Liberal Democrat deputy.

Mr Lansley appeared willing to give ground for the sake of the Coalition, saying: “This is not Henry V on St Crispin’s Day – a one man on horseback approach.” Under the NHS plans, the independent regulator will get a new role as an “economic regulator”. Mr Clegg said there should be a duty to promote collaboration, which might ease pressure on struggling units.

He also said: “People get confused when one day they hear politicians declare how much they love the NHS and the next they hear people describing themselves as government advisers saying that reform is a huge opportunity for big profits for health care corporations.”

Nick Clegg: NHS regulation re-think just the beginning – Channel 4 News

Nick Clegg is expected to propose further amendments to the Health Bill over the next few weeks as he attempts to appease his party over the scale and pace of the reforms, writes Victoria Macdonald.

On Tuesday night, the Deputy Prime Minister presented a page-long document to the weekly meeting of his parliamentary party in which he singled out the role of Monitor, the NHS regulator, as the area of the Bill needing the most substantial change.

The document, which was later leaked, suggests removing all references to Monitor being an economic regulator.

“Instead of having a duty to promote competition, Monitor’s main duty should be explicitly to protect and promote the interests of patients,” Nick Clegg wrote.

He said the decision to establish it as an economic regulator was clearly a misjudgment and that the NHS could not be treated as if it were just a utility “like electricity or telephones”.

But his party has tabled more than 21 substantial amendments to the Bill and while Mr Clegg has picked out one of the key elements, which goes to the heart of the legislation, Lib Dem insiders say they expect him to deal with issues such as accountability of the commissioning boards, and conflicts of interest where GPs buying care for patients also have financial interests in companies providing treatments.

Threat to NHS made clear | The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

CSP chief executive Phil Gray argues that the government’s NHS reform plans always intended to turn the NHS into a state insurance provider, not a state deliverer.

Writing in a letter to the Guardian, published today, Mr Gray says health secretary Andrew Lansley made clear his objectives in his white paper and the subsequent Health and Social Care Bill.

Mr Gray was writing in response to David Cameron’s speech on Monday, setting out the case for the NHS reforms.

David Cameron ‘had never heard’ of adviser who warned on NHS reforms | Politics | guardian.co.uk

David Cameron has distanced himself from Mark Britnell, a member of the “kitchen cabinet” advising him on health, after he said the government’s reforms would transform the NHS into a “state insurance provider, not a state deliverer” of care.

Cameron said he had never heard of Britnell before the weekend, despite the fact that the adviser – the head of health at accountancy giant KPMG – was invited to join a group of senior health policy experts in Downing Street earlier this month. The “kitchen cabinet”, which includes former NHS executives and the former Department of Health permanent secretary Lord Crisp, was assembled by Cameron’s special adviser on health, Paul Bate.

“He [Britnell] is not my adviser,” Cameron told MPs, insisting he had “never heard about this person in my life” before it emerged on Sunday that Britnell told a conference of executives from the private sector last year that future reforms would show “no mercy” to the NHS.

Britnell also told the conference, held in New York, that the reforms would offer a “big opportunity” to the for-profit sector and suggested the NHS could be improved by charging patients.

 

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

NHS news is dominated by opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill, the bill to destroy the NHS.

Andrew Lansley has just finished presenting a speech to the King’s Fund. NHS reforms live blog – Andrew Lansley speech live | Society | guardian.co.uk

There is disagreement between coalition partners David Cameron and Nick Clegg over the role of Monitor.

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.

Cameron’s NHS reorganisation likely to widen health funding gap | Left Foot Forward

David Cameron, in a speech at Ealing Hospital yesterday, affirmed his support for Andrew Lansley’s controversial NHS shake up.

In an attempt to shore up support for his government’s ailing NHS reforms David Cameron’s speech sought to explain why change is important for the future of the NHS. What followed, however, were not the words of a man who had taken “time to pause, listen and reflect”. Instead Mr Cameron’s speech neglected to tell the whole story and was almost devoid of any mention of the key issue, competition.

The key plank of Mr Cameron’s address was that his changes were needed in order to save money in the future. He said:

“If we stay as we are, the NHS will need £130 billion a year by 2015 – meaning a potential funding gap of £20bn. The question is, what are we going to do about that.”

He may be asking the right question but he is far from providing the right answer. The truth is that Mr. Cameron’s perilous NHS reforms are going to divert much needed attention away from the key challenge of finding the £15-20bn savings it has been asked for. The King’s Fund rightly points out that:

“Finding the £20 billion in efficiency savings needed to maintain services must be the overriding priority, so the very real risk that the speed and scale of the reforms could destabilise the NHS and undermine care must be actively managed.”

NHS, CIO, Conservatives, GP, GP Consortia, Andrew Lansley, Minister for Health, healthcare, IT, Pm, Prime Minister, david Cameron, Tory, primary care trust, deficit, redundancy, – CIO UK Magazine

A CIO at one of Britain’s leading NHS trusts has revealed to me the very worrying truth behind the shake-up of the National Health Service that the Conservative Party led government is trying to push through.

If the GP consortia led policy comes into force patient data will be placed at great risk and the likely savings to the national budget are unlikely, in fact tax payers will pay more into the health system for no return.

The leading healthcare CIO described to me the effects that the policy being driven by the Minister for Health Andrew Lansley.

Putting the onus of healthcare funding and decision making onto GPs is, according to this CIO, in effect placing a corner shop sized business in charge of an enterprise as large as a supermarket. The two do not compare, the only similarity is that they are both in the same vertical sector. The infrastructure of best practice and business processes will be discarded.

Cameron health ‘reforms’ are mess|21May11|Socialist Worker

Tory plans to “reform” the NHS out of existence are taking a battering as public anger continues to grow.

Now even the leading doctor brought in to review the proposals has declared the plans “unworkable”.

Professor Steve Field warned last week that forcing hospitals to compete could “destroy essential services”.

A desperate David Cameron was forced to respond by visiting a London hospital to pledge his family’s “love for the NHS”.

But beneath his honeyed words were barbed warnings that the Tories are in no mood to retreat. “It is because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it,” he said.

But Cameron said he remains committed to more privatisation and more competition in the NHS.

Private healthcare companies are already rubbing their hands together at the prospect of grabbing our cash.

NHS reforms live blog – Andrew Lansley speech live | Society | guardian.co.uk

10.14am: The health secretary gets polite applause as he finishes speaking.

BBC News – Nick Clegg to oppose NHS competition regulator

Nick Clegg will oppose the idea of a regulator promoting competition in the health service in England, a key part of planned NHS reforms.

It places the deputy PM in opposition to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley who wants more competition to cut prices.

Mr Clegg also criticised David Cameron for declaring his love for the NHS while taking advice from people talking up the potential for private profits.

Labour said Mr Clegg was only interested in saving his party.

BBC deputy political editor James Landale said Mr Clegg’s intervention, in a meeting with Lib Dem MPs and peers, marked an escalation in negotiations with his Conservative partners over the Health and Social Care Bill which is currently on hold.

It will also be seen as a rebuff to the prime minister who used his speech on Monday to try to assert his political authority and ownership over the changes being made to the bill.

Pulse – GPs told to cut hospital use by 15% in a year

Exclusive: GPs are facing demands to deliver unprecedented reductions in hospital activity over the current financial year, with NHS managers setting targets for cuts in admissions of 15% or more by next April, a Pulse investigation reveals.

Primary care organisations are going far further than even the Department of Health had planned, and demanding GPs deliver major cuts in hospital activity in less than half the time set out in the national QIPP programme. GPs warned the plans were unachievable and that there was a risk they could damage patient care.

In November, Pulse revealed Sir John Oldham, DH national clinical lead for quality and productivity, had warned GPs that by the end of 2013/14, they would have to cut unscheduled admissions of patients with long-term conditions by a fifth and help reduce A&E attendance by 10% and length of stay by 25%.

But responses from 120 PCTs and health boards under the Freedom of Information Act show they have earmarked an average 15% reduction in unscheduled hospital admissions in patients with long-term conditions by April 2012 alone. They are also targeting average reductions of 31% in A&E attendance and 26% in length of stay by the end of this financial year.

Nick Clegg threatens to veto health reforms over role of NHS regulator | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has set himself on a collision course with the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, by signalling his determination to veto a key plank of the government’s controversial NHS reforms.

Clegg has singled out the role of Monitor, the NHS regulator, as the area of the embattled NHS bill that needs the “most substantial changes” and has said descriptions of the body as an economic regulator should be removed on the grounds that the NHS cannot be regulated as if it were just a utility “like electricity or telephones”. [or trains]

Coalition in ‘Grand Canyon’ split over future of the NHS ‘reforms’

A chasm as deep as the Grand Canyon has emerged between the coalition allies over the role of Monitor, which will regulate competition in the ‘reformed’ NHS.

Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Wednesday 18 May) that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s assertion that Monitor should focus on collaboration rather than fostering competition in the NHS was a direct challenge to David Cameron.

A central tenet of the Health and Social Care bill, currently before parliament, is that a beefed-up Monitor would be the engine to encourage competition and open the door for private healthcare companies to gobble up and ‘cherry pick’ lucrative NHS contracts.

Unite’s national officer for health Rachael Maskell said: ”Nick Clegg’s new found assertiveness against the privatisation of the NHS is to be welcomed – but uncomfortably for the coalition it now exposes a chasm as wide as the Grand Canyon over the fate of the bill in particular and the future of the NHS between the coalition partners.

”David Cameron is being two-faced. On one hand, he is engaging in a PR exercise saying how much he loves the NHS, yet the Tory party has been bankrolled by private healthcare companies since he became leader. The NHS is not safe in Tory hands.

”The prime minister is also reportedly being advised by Mark Britnell – former NHS official now working for accountants KPMG – who is alleged to have said that private companies would show ‘no mercy’ to the NHS.

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

NHS news is dominated by a speech given by David Cameron yesteday. He claims that the NHS must change but that does not justify the privatisation and withdrawal of services that he proposes.

He mentions a crisis of funding. 38 Degrees and UK Uncut are clearly showing how to resolve that issue – by combating tax avoidance by rich tax avoiding Capitalists.

17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech
17.05.11: Steve Bell on David Cameron's NHS reforms speech

He engages in “It’s because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it.” emotionality which attracts many comments. I wonder if Craig Oliver was drunk when he came up with that one.

Cameron repeatedly claims that the NHS is safe in his hands BUT the Health and Social Care Bill does away with the government providing a comprehensive health service

and

it has received near total opposition from healthcare professionals. Cameron claims to be willing to listen to doctors and nurses BUT they are calling for the bill to be abandoned.

Many groups and individuals respond to Cameron’s speech.

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.

My love for the NHS is why I want change… » Hospital Dr

(Text of Cameron’s speech)

PM has still not made case for NHS reforms | News

David Cameron’s speech today on NHS reform has one familiar element: the extent of his personal attachment to the health service.

“It is because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it,” he says. That is an argument familiar from the election campaign, when Mr Cameron emphasised that the NHS was safe in his hands precisely because he had personal experience of its excellence during the tragic illness of his late son, Ivan. Indeed, it underlay the Tories’ commitment not only to exempt health from spending cuts, but to increase its funding.

Few doubt the NHS needs reform and that spending at present levels is unsustainable given the demands of an ageing population and the expansion in expensive new treatments. But accepting the need for reform is not the same thing as welcoming the Government’s health bill. This is a complicated set of proposals in one piece of legislation, which gives GPs more control over spending and commissioning services and at the same time seeks to take out layers of bureaucracy and increase competition. Many people, including health professionals, who would happily give GPs a greater say in the service, baulk at the extension of commercial competition. And Mr Cameron’s decision to “pause” the reforms – but not, as he says today, to stop them – is a measure of the public disquiet about the Bill and its implications.

UNISON Press | Press Releases Front Page

Commenting on David Cameron’s speech on the Health and Social Care Bill, at Ealing Hospital, in London, today (16 May), Christina McAnea, Head of Health at UNISON, which represents more than 450,000 health workers, said:

“David Cameron is taking the ‘national’ out of the health service and turning it into a fragmented, money-spinning operation.

“The Prime Minister is using extreme examples to paint an untrue picture. He admits the NHS is providing the best service it has ever done, with reports saying it is the most efficient and equitable health system.

“Cameron’s call to crack down on waste in the NHS is a smokescreen for a move to a wholesale market, which opens the NHS up to privatisation. The real waste is the time spent on the fatally flawed reforms, which will force NHS patients to the back of a very long queue.

“He talks about having more choice and protecting budgets, but health workers are seeing their jobs axed and wards, services and even entire hospitals lost without any arrangements to protect continuity of patient care.

Unite questions how Cameron’s ‘substantive’ changes to NHS bill are going to happen

David Cameron’s pledge to ensure ‘substantive’ changes to the NHS ‘reform’ bill should be probed to discover what he actually means, Unite, the largest union in the country, said today (Monday 16 May).

Unite said that the deeply flawed Health and Social Care bill should be scrapped and a rtoyal commission set-up to investigate the future of the NHS.

Unite pointed out the discrepancy between the prime minister’s ‘vision’ and the fact that tens of thousands of NHS jobs had been or were going to be lost in the near future. Wards are already closing, waiting lists growing and services being axed or reduced.

Unite national officer for health, Rachael Maskell, said: ”David Cameron in his speech today was long on rhetoric, but short of specifics. This was a PR exercise in verbal gymnastics due to the political pressures he is under, especially from his Liberal Democrat allies.

”David Cameron wants it both ways with the Health and Social Care bill. He said today there will be no privatisation, no ‘cherry picking’ of services by private companies and no up-front costs for care, but we question how the prime minister’s ‘substantive’ changes are going to be incorporated into the legislation.

”The bill is so flawed that it should be scrapped. The whole bill is designed on the premise of Monitor’s role as an economic regulator and the concept of ‘any willing provider’ i.e. private companies. If the prime minister is serious about these changes, it will mean a new bill.

Macmillan Responds To The Prime Minister’s Speech On NHS Reform, UK

Responding to David Cameron’s speech on NHS reform today, Mike Hobday, Head of Policy of Macmillan Cancer Support, said:

“We welcome the Prime Minister’s reassurance that the relevant healthcare professionals will be involved in key decision-making about the commissioning of NHS care and the commitment that patients will receive high-quality and coordinated care, rather than the NHS being subject to an unbridled free market. This is a key safeguard to ensure that care for cancer patients does not suffer under the proposed NHS reforms.

“Cancer is a set of highly complex diseases and GPs tell us that they will need specialist help to commission cancer services. This is why it is vital that cancer networks should continue to be used to inform decision making about the commissioning of cancer services, and why the Government must commit to fund them at least until GP consortia are up and running in 2014.

“We hope the ‘listening exercise’ results in a long-term commitment to clinical networks, and are encouraged by the David Cameron’s comments today that this will be the case.”

BMA Comment On Prime Minister’s Speech On NHS, UK

Commenting on the Prime Minister’s speech on NHS reform in England today (Monday 16 May, 2011), Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of Council at the BMA, said:

“We agree with the Prime Minister that the NHS needs to change. There needs to be greater integration, greater efficiency, and more emphasis on prevention. However, the Health Bill as it is currently written would make these improvements far harder to achieve, leading to a more fragmented health service, with many hospitals at risk of closure. Whilst we welcome his commitment to listening to staff and to taking them with him, most doctors will not feel able to support this Bill unless it is radically amended.”

The Prime Minister also highlighted the fact that alcohol misuse and obesity place significant burdens on the NHS. Dr Meldrum added:

“Unfortunately the government has often ignored the advice of health organisations on how to tackle alcohol misuse and obesity, preferring to listen to and rely on the views of industries which have a vested interest in selling unhealthy products“.

Labour – Cameron’s Reforms Will Leave NHS Fragmented, Taking it Backwards – UK Politics – News on News

John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, has hit out at David Cameron’s plans for NHS reform, saying they will leave the service fragmented and take it backwards.

Labour has also released a document on the lack of coherence in the Tory-led Government’s plans and showing the level of concern and opposition to them throughout the NHS.

John Healey said:

“This is the Prime Minister’s third launch of his NHS plans. He’s made his ‘I love the NHS’ speech before but today he said nothing to clear up the confusion and chaos around his ideological, top-down reorganisation. He made the case for change in the NHS, but not for his change.

“David Cameron’s plans will fragment the NHS, with a free market free for all undermining the quality, integration and public accountability of NHS services. As even the Tory-led Health Select Committee has said, the legislation as it stands will make better services and better value for money harder not easier to achieve. It will take the NHS backwards.

“David Cameron talks of his love for the NHS, but he has broken his promise to protect the NHS. If he really wants an NHS with no privatisation, no new charges for patient services and no competition for its own sake, he must make fundamental changes to his NHS plans because his Health Bill allows exactly this.”

Ignore his denials: Cameron, like Blair, wants to turn ‘NHS’ into a kitemark | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

The difference between David Cameron and Tony Blair is that Blair was better at disguising his intentions. He would never have announced, for example, the sale of public forests. Instead he might have promised “a world-class forest estate” in which “walker-led beacon-foundation woodlands” would be managed through “partnerships with a plurality of recreational providers”. Ten years later we would discover that our forests had mysteriously fallen into the hands of timber companies, and were being felled in the name of customer choice.

Nor would he have done anything as stupid as this government’s attempt to transform the NHS in one bill. Cameron sought to dig himself out of his hole on Monday, but too late. His claim that “there will be no privatisation … no cherry-picking from private providers” reminds us that privatisation and cherry-picking are the likely outcomes of his bill. Blair would have allowed private interests to keep spreading through the health service as slowly and quietly as dry rot. In their book The Plot Against the NHS, Colin Leys and Stewart Player show that Cameron’s health and social care bill consolidates a plan that has been fermenting for many years.

The Plot Against the NHS #1

The Plot Against the NHS #2

 

Continue ReadingNHS news review

The Plot Against the NHS #2

Spread the love
The plot against the NHS
The plot against the NHS

Selected excerpts from ‘The Plot Against the NHS’ by Colin Leys and Stewart Player. Chapter One is available here. I highly recommend this book available from Merlin Press for £10.

p.148~154 References in the original.

Within the BMA a strong challenge emerged to the leadership’s position of ‘critical engagement’ with the government’s plans, and a demand for outright opposition. The development of serious opposition from a large part of the medical profession, and especially from GPs , was significant, because Lansley constantly claimed to have their support.

The false case for the Health and Social Care Bill

The government’s claim that the NHS was in urgent need of further fundamental reform was also becoming more and more obviously false. During the previous ten years, while the NHS was being covertly marketized, the Labour government had raised NHS funding rapidly towards the average level of spending of the other major countries of Western Europe. Spending on the NHS still remained significantly below that of the richer EU nations, and a significant portion of the new funding was absorbed by the cost of market creation. But the extra cash also produced some important improvements. Staff levels were improved, waiting times for elective care were sharply reduced, facilities were renovated or replaced.

This was reflected in the high marks given to the NHS in the Commonwealth Fund report cited in chapter 1. And by 2010 the particular charge constantly made by the marketizers, that England lagged behing European countries in the survival rates for major killer illnesses, was ceasing to be true. Lansley repeatedly declared that a wholesale restructuring of the NHS was ‘a necessity, not an option’, and David Cameron asserted that ‘pretending that there is some “easy option” of sticking with the status quo… is a complete fiction’. But in January 2011, coinciding with the publication of the Health and Social Care Bill, a paper by the King’s Fund economist John Appleby, published in the BMJ, showed tha t the marketizers’ charge was unfounded. It turned out to rest partly on the use of European data that were not comparable with the English data (and in some cases highly unreliable), and partly on selecting static data instead of trends over time. For several of the conditions usually cited English survival rates have in fact been improving so fast over the last 30 years that if the trends continue they will overtake
European rates by 2012.

The real choice

The choice is not between change and no change. It is between handing over a public service to be developed by private enterprise in the interests of shareholders, and ensuring that it develops in the interests of the public – and as the public sees those interests, not as politicians declare them to be. To maintain that there is no capacity for improvement within public provision is empty rhetoric. What evidence is there that public servcies are incapable of change and improvement (provided they are not undermined by financial starvation or market-driven disorganization)?

Around the world there are various examples of excellent public and publicly-provided health services, and all of them need to be studied for ways to improve the NHS in England – and beginning with an examination of those that are developing within the UK itself. The national media largely ignore what occurs across our nearest borders, but what is happening there, and especially in Scotland and Wales, raise crucially important questions about the future now being charted for the NHS in England.

Looking at Scotland

Even before devolution health ministers in Westminster had been too aware of Scottish sentiment to risk pushing the internal market very far there, and the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition governments that held office in Scotland after devolution, from 1999 to 2007, recognised that voters would not support them if they followed England’s path to a healthcare market. Scotland’s Area Health Boards remained in place, foundation trust status was not introduced, nor was payment by results. The PFI was used for three Scottish hospital-building schemes, and one Independent Sector Treatment Centre was opened at Strathco in Angus. But these measures provoked intense controversy and in 2003, responding to pressure from both doctors and the public, the coalition government ended the purchaser-provider split, restoring direct administration to the NHS in Scotland and decisively closing off the market option. Also in response to public opinion, in 2002 the Scottish Labour-Lib Dem coalition made personal care for the elderly free, instead of means-tested as in England.

The 2007 elections, however, led to the formation of a minority SNP government, and yet further departures from the market-driven policy that was being pursued in England. In 2008 hospital car parking charges – a significant deterrant for families – were abolished, except at PFI hospitals, where legal reasons prevented it; and in 2010 plans were announced to abolish prescription charges from 2011. No further PFI schemes have been undertaken. Glasgow’s biggest acute hospital is being built with public funds, the ISTC at Stracathro was taken into public ownership, and plans to outsource the management of a health centre in Lanarkshire to a private company were dropped. Out-of-hours care is publicly provided.

Perhaps most significant of all for the future, in 2009 elections were introduced for the majority of the members of Scotland’s Health Boards, beginning with two pilot schemes to be evaluated after four years. This means that in addition to professional medical judgement democratic representation, rather than individual ‘patient choice’, could become a significant element in determining the direction of future change.

In face of all this the marketizers inevitably portrey Scotland’s NHS as a failure, with the usual misuse of statistics to support their claim. For example they routinely state that Scotland’s waiting times are worse than England’s, because no element of competition has been introduced into Scotland’s. In fact an analysis of newly-consolidated data concludes that since 2005 waiting times have fallen faster in Scotland than in England. In each year since then Scotland has actually had either the second shortest or (more often) the shortest waiting times of the four nations in the UK. And over the ten years from 1999 to 2008 Scotland’s mortality rates for all causes of death declined almost exactly as fast as England’s. As Dr Matthew Dunnigan, the author of the waiting times analysis, says, the objective comparison of English health statistics with those for the three devolved nations is now a very important task.

Looking at Wales

The story in Wales has many similarities to Scotland’s. For the first eight years following devolution a Labour minority government was in office, only giving way to a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition in 2007. But as in Scotland, even the initial Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government did not dare follow the English path. The purchaser-provider split remained, but Wales did not adopt foundation trusts or payment by results. Development remained based on collaboration and planning, rather than on a market system with legally enforcable contracts and all the tensions and extra administrative costs involved.

And after 2007, under the Labour-Plaid coalition, the purchaser-provider split was dropped. In 2009 a major reform resulted in the formation of just seven integrated Local Health Boards to plan and operate the NHS in Wales. These are very like the Area Health Boards in Scotland, but also have overall responsibility for all aspects of health, including public health, with a strong emphasis on linking health and social care.

The Local Health Boards in Wales are not elected but they must have members representing local primary care, community care, public health, local government and voluntary organizations, as well as lay members. In one Local Health Board (Powys) the purchaser-provider split was abolished earlier and the Board was integrated with primary care and community health service providers. Other Boards are set to follow suit – exactly the opposite direction of change from that taken in England, where even community health services have been forced into the marketplace.

Wales also declined to use the PFI for hospital-building, led the way (in 2007) in abolishing prescription charges, abolished hospital parking charges, and dealt with the vexed issue of means-tested personal care for the elderly by widening the definition of what is considered nursing care (and therefore free), and by setting a flat-rate contribution to the cost of personal care throughout the whole country.

Considerations for England

We need to ask ourselves why Scotland and Wales opted to keep the NHS as a public service, and even extend the principle of free acess. Longstanding Scottish and Welsh cultural traditions are certainly important, especially a deeply-embedded commitment to social democracy in public life, and in the medical profession, which politicians of all parties have to respect. But another key reason is cost. Next to education health is by far the most important and expensive devolved publis service. Even before the financial crisis politicians of all parties in Scotland and Wales realised that if they followed the English route, and allowed the costs of operating a market to start soaking up ten per cent or more of the health budget, health services would be liable to deteriorate, with dire political consequences for themselves.

They know that the public spending cuts imposed by the government in Westminster will hit Scottish and Welsh health services. But they also know that the effects will be smaller that they would have been had they opted for a market, and that whatever they have to do will have a legitimate foundation in public opinion, which remains at the base of decison-making about the NHS in both countries. And when the crisis has passed they will still have a public health service, not a three-tiered healthcare market and a low-risk playground for healthcare corporations and ‘doctorpreneurs’.

Scotland and Wales don’t exhaust the alternatives for the future in England. Other good models of publically-provided health services exist and deserve study. But the successful evolution of the NHS in the rest of the UK shows that Cameron’s assertion that ‘we can’t afford not to modernise’ – meaning that we have no alternative but to accept the abolition of the NHS as a public service – is pure bluster. It has no foundation in evidence and serves no interest except that of the private health industry. In the parts of the UK that the plot against the NHS couldn’t reach, people see through it. They know that good health care for all means excluding profit-making, and have shown that with sufficient public backing that principle can prevail. We need to insist that in England too the NHS is not for selling.

Continue ReadingThe Plot Against the NHS #2

NHS news review

Spread the love

NHS news:

Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms are unworkable, says review chief | Society | The Guardian

Prof Steve Field, chairman of the NHS Future Forum – set up last month to undertake the coalition’s “listening exercise” – flatly rejects the health secretary’s plan to compel hospitals to compete for patients and income, which he says could “destroy key services”. The proposal, contained in Andrew Lansley’s health and social care bill, has led key medical organisations to warn that it will lead to the breakup of the NHS and betray the service’s founding principles.

It was ‘Nurse’s Day’ on Friday.

A report from the Torygraph Junk food Britain costs the NHS more than cigarettes and alcohol – Telegraph says that obesity is a huge problem to public health. Lansley consults junk-food companies on NHS policy: McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy | Politics | The Guardian.

There is confirmation by Mark Britnell, an advisor to Cameron that the intention of the Con-Dems’ abolition of the NHS bill is to abolish the NHS and create a health care system based on the US insurance model. He said that the NHS “will be shown no mercy” by the Coalition.

Shameless liar Nick Clegg lies shamelessly by stating that there will be no “privatisation by the back door”. The theme is picked up by the Morning Star.

Shameless liar David Cameron lies shamelessly by claiming “… it’s because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it.”

These shameless liars raise an issue of democracy. Shameless liars deliberately decieving the electorate should be held accountable for their actions. There have been similar recent incidents in UK political history with Blair, Campbell & Co and it appears that Cameron and Clegg are following that example e.g. Clegg’s “I believe” formulation.

Cameron is expected to make a speech full of shameless lies today e.g. “this Government will never, ever take risks with the NHS”.

The BMA warns on training.

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.

Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms are unworkable, says review chief | Society | The Guardian

The senior doctor called in by David Cameron to review the government’s health reforms has dismissed them as unworkable and “destabilising” in provisional conclusions that could fatally undermine the plans.

Prof Steve Field, chairman of the NHS Future Forum – set up last month to undertake the coalition’s “listening exercise” – flatly rejects the health secretary’s plan to compel hospitals to compete for patients and income, which he says could “destroy key services”. The proposal, contained in Andrew Lansley’s health and social care bill, has led key medical organisations to warn that it will lead to the breakup of the NHS and betray the service’s founding principles.

In an interview with the Guardian, Field says Lansley’s plan to make the NHS regulator Monitor’s primary duty to enforce competition between healthcare providers should be scrapped. Instead it should be obliged to do the opposite, by promoting co-operation and collaboration and the integration of health services.

“If you had a free market, that would destroy essential services in very big hospitals but also might destroy the services that need to be provided in small hospitals,” says Field.

“The risk in going forward [with the bill] as it is, is [of] destabilising the NHS at a local level. It would lead to some hospitals not being able to continue as they are. If you were to say ‘we’re going to go out to competition for vascular surgery services’, University Hospital Birmingham wouldn’t be able to run their own trauma centre, for example, because you wouldn’t have the staff and the skills on site to do things and the volume of procedures needed to ensure clinical standards remain high.”

Nurses “Holding The NHS Together” – Carter, UK

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) today praised the vital work of nurses as they marked International Nurses’ Day. Dr Peter Carter, RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary, spoke out to highlight the work nurses carry out above and beyond the call of duty, and called for their achievements to be recognised.

Nurses’ Day was also marked by The Prime Minister, David Cameron, and key figures from across the political spectrum, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Leader of the opposition Ed Miliband, as well as Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. The political leaders all recorded video messages pledging their support for nursing and thanking nurses for their work. Many thousands of people have also signed a pledge in support of nurses on the RCN Nurses’ Day website.

Dr Peter Carter, RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary said: “Nurses’ Day is an opportunity for all of us, whether we are patients, nurses or politicians, to reflect on the value of a profession whose worth is clearer than ever as we deal with an aging population who increasingly need care. Medical advances are helping people to live longer, but it is nursing which can help them to live well and make those extra years worth having. I am very pleased that in spite of all that is going on in the NHS at the moment, political leaders and MPs of all persuasions have made time to recognise the value of nursing.”

Junk food Britain costs the NHS more than cigarettes and alcohol – Telegraph

A rising tide of diseases caused by poor diet and couch potato lifestyles are costing the health service around £12bn a year – almost twice the £6.6bn spent on ill health linked to smoking and alcohol, according to research by experts from Oxford University and the World Health Organisation.

The paper, published in the Journal of Public Health, says obesity and poor diet now place “the largest economic burden” on the NHS of all lifestyle choices.

Experts said that while the individual health risks of smoking and excess drinking are high, resulting in billions spent treating liver disease and lung cancer, the far higher numbers of people eating a poor diet had a bigger overall impact on NHS costs.

David Cameorn’s health adviser says the NHS will be ‘shown no mercy’ by the Government – mirror.co.uk

David Cameron’s health adviser has warned the NHS “will be shown no mercy” by the Coalition.

Mark Britnell, who has been advising the PM on reforms, revealed that the NHS could turn into a US-style insurance system.

The former Department of Health bureaucrat said he believed the NHS would leave operations and other procedures to the private sector, with the taxpayer picking up the bill. Unions were outraged at the remarks and they will also anger Lib Dems who have demanded big changes to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s reforms.

Last month, the PM ordered a pause in the plans after Lib Dem activists voted against them at their party’s conference. Mr Britnell, head of health at accountants KPMG, visited Downing Street last week to advise on NHS policy. Speaking to bosses of private health firms, Mr Britnell said: “In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider, not a deliverer.”

NHS reforms will allow private sector to make big profits, says David Cameron’s adviser | Mail Online

NHS reforms will provide private firms the opportunity to make big profits, one of David Cameron’s advisers has said.

Mark Britnell said the healthcare system will be transformed by the Government’s controversial reforms to become a ‘state insurance provider, not a state deliverer’ of care.

His unguarded comments to a conference of executives came as there were calls for Health Minister Andrew Lansley to water down reforms which will give the private sector a far greater role in patient care.

Clegg in vow to listen to medics – Health – The Star

DEPUTY PM Nick Clegg told doctors and nurses in Sheffield unpopular plans to reform the NHS would be “significantly and substantially” altered after a public backlash, writes Ben Spencer.

The Hallam MP, quizzed by staff at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, pledged there would be no “privatisation by the back door”.

The Lib Dem leader hopes to reassert his party’s independence within the Coalition Government after their disastrous performance at last week’s council elections.

He told staff: “No Government has the right to change the NHS without greater consent from people within the NHS.

A chance to move ahead / Comment / Home – Morning Star

Health professionals and patients fear NHS reforms will “destroy essential services,” senior doctor Professor Steve Field warned at the weekend.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has vowed to veto the legislation but that’s merely as part of efforts to demonstrate a greater influence by his party following disastrous results at the ballot box last week.

It gives some perspective on his lack of understanding when he commented on a Bill that is designed to allow the backdoor privatisation of the NHS that there would be no “backdoor privatisation” of the NHS.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans would scrap primary care trusts and strategic health authorities and give GPs control of £80 billion of NHS spending, with a remit to commission treatment and services from “any willing provider” – including private companies.

It also places a duty on watchdog Monitor to promote competition in the provision of health services and, ostensibly incidentally, removes the duty to provide a free health service from the Health Secretary’s mandate.

The clear impression is that the government is seeking to privatise the NHS. Of that there is no doubt and Prof Field made it quite clear in his comments.

“If you had a free market, that would destroy essential services in very big hospitals and also the services in small hospitals,” he said unequivocally.

David Cameron: ‘It’s because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it’ | News

David Cameron will signal his determination to press ahead with “deep change” in the NHS, warning it faces a fundamental crisis in the future if reforms are blocked.

The Prime Minister will use a keynote speech to detail some of the reworking being done of the Government’s health service shake-up to meet widespread political and professional hostility.

But he will make clear that the controversial package drawn up by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will not be abandoned as Labour seeks to exploit tensions within the Tory-Lib Dem coalition over the plans.

Speaking at a London hospital today, the premier is expected to say: “We save the NHS by changing it. We risk its long-term future by resisting change now.

“I know that some people still have concerns. They might be listening to this and thinking: ‘OK, but if you love the NHS so much, if you don’t want to take any risks with it, why do you want to change it?

“But this is the point: it’s because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it. It needs to change to make it work better today and it needs to change to avoid a crisis tomorrow.”

Cameron to promise ‘no risks’ in NHS reform – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

David Cameron will today attempt to breathe life back into the Coalition’s faltering plans for the NHS.

In his first major speech on health since the controversial plans were put on hold, he will set out the case for radical reform while insisting that “this Government will never, ever take risks with the NHS”.

BBC News – Cameron set to stand firm on need for NHS changes

David Cameron will try to rally support for planned changes to the NHS in England, in a speech to health staff.

The prime minister is expected to focus on a need for “deep change”, warning of a “crisis” if proposals are blocked.

Medical training reforms threaten patient care | GP online

In a speech to the BMA’s Annual Conference of Junior Doctors, Dr Shree Datta, who co-chairs the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, said proposals laid out in Liberating the NHS: developing the healthcare workforce ‘threaten the future provision of high quality patient care as anything in the Health Bill itself’.

‘They propose to invent a new system to commission, deliver, and quality-manage training through large-scale, untested, changes to the current system,’ she said.

Dr Datta expressed concerns over the pace in which medical training reforms would be implemented. ‘I am sure many of you remember MTAS,’ she said. ‘Are we really expected to believe that, with an entirely new structure in place, the recruitment process will run smoothly in a year’s time?’

Reforms could spell the end of deaneries, leaving Health Education England in charge of training funds, Dr Datta warned. Employer-led ‘skills networks’ are beginning to appear but ‘no one knows what they are going to do,’ Dr Datta said.

‘Are employers really going to focus on investing in the long term training of doctors when they are being asked to deliver £20bn in efficiency savings?,’ she added

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Only a few NHS news items so far today. Lansley has admitted that all London hospitals will have to transform into foundation trusts. This appears to be counter to Tory “no top-down reorganisation” ‘commitments’. Later 13/5/11 edit: Yes, hardly noteworthy compared to the bill to abolish the NHS being a top-down reorganisation, of course.

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.

UNISON Calls On Lansley To Hear The Criticism And Drop The Bill, UK

Health Minister Andrew Lansley must do more than listen – he must hear and act on the barrage of criticism and opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill. This is the message from UNISON, the UK’s largest union, representing more than 450,000 health workers, in its response to the NHS ‘Listening Exercise’.

Christina McAnea, UNISON’s Head of Health, said:

“Andrew Lansley seems incapable of actually hearing the outcry from patients, public, staff, health experts, charities, health economists and even from within the coalition government.

“The public do not want a health service where people can buy their way to the top of the NHS queue, or where healthcare is rationed to make profits for private companies and their shareholders. We know that three quarters of bankruptcies in America are because of the high cost of health bills – no one wants the NHS to be dragged in that direction.

“The Government’s plans are riddled with conflicts of interest and undermine the accountability of the NHS to patients and the public. Patients will soon be priced out of care and see services, wards and hospitals lost without any arrangement to continue treatment.

“We believe the bill is too fatally flawed to be amended and should be dropped completely. ”

BBC News – Andrew Lansley: NHS services in London will change

The government has admitted for the first time that health services on the ground in London will have to change because of NHS reorganisation.

The coalition is turning every hospital in London into a foundation trust, with more control over its own spending.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has told BBC London this will inevitably mean changes to the way services are delivered.

A series of hospital mergers is already planned in the city.

Foundation trusts are still within the NHS – but have more freedom to make their own decisions and more freedom over how they spend their money.

Doctors’ chief uncompromising over NHS reform – politics.co.uk

The government’s promise to pause its bill on NHS reforms for a listening exercise is a mere “political device”, a medical boss has said.

Speaking to politics.co.uk, Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) council, said David Cameron should withdraw the health and social care bill completely rather than amend the legislation.

“At the risk of using a very abused phrase, I agree with Nick [Clegg] that ‘no bill is better than a bad bill’,” he said. His comments underline the difficulties faced by ministers as they seek to identify areas of compromise.

Extensive negotiations with health secretary Andrew Lansley and senior government officials have seen the BMA united with other health organisations in opposing the bulk of the legislation.

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Lansley claims that he is not creating a market despite the private health industry expecting exactly that with healthcare bought privately or through health insurance, staff cuts affecting the standard of service, Lib-Dems demand that Monitor should not only promote competition – note that they are not demanding that it should not promote competition – Baroness Young on difficulties the bill will face in the Lords, UNISON calls for the bill to be dropped due to huge opposition and Dave Gilmour pays for Gary McKinnon’s treatment.

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.

Coalition ‘is weakening effective government’ – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

The British public’s brief flirtation with coalition government is over. A year after the Liberal Democrat-Conservative administration was formed, voters think it has made government weaker, less decisive, less responsive and more confused.

A study by a Whitehall think tank contains very bad news for Nick Clegg. It suggests he has failed in his mission to convince people that coalitions are a good thing. Even current Liberal Democrat supporters are not persuaded.

Mr Clegg’s fightback after last week’s double defeat at the ballot box suffered a setback last night when David Cameron said the Government’s rethink over its NHS reforms was his idea, not Mr Clegg’s. The Prime Minister told the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs that his party must not “allow the Liberal Democrats to pose as a moderating influence” on it. Mr Cameron said the partnership would put his party in a position where it could go for an outright majority at the next general election.

Almost three in five people (58 per cent) believe the Liberal Democrats have abandoned their principles by joining the Coalition. Some 61 per cent of people who voted for Mr Clegg’s party last year now support another one. The only crumb of comfort for Mr Clegg is that the public still think his party was right to join forces with the Tories – by a margin of 52 to 43 per cent.

Pulse – Lansley insists: ‘I have no private sector target’

Health secretary Andrew Lansley has insisted he has no objective to increase private sector involvement in the NHS, as he moved to counter claims that his NHS reforms will pave the way for the privatisation of the health service.

Speaking at the NAPC’s GP-led commissioning conference in London yesterday, a defiant Mr Lansley hit back at the growing army of critics to his health bill by insisting that competition was ‘a means to an end but not an end in itself’.

The beleaguered health secretary has faced a fresh storm of criticism this week from opposition MPs and the profession, with RCGP chair Clare Gerada claiming that implementing it as it stands will cause ‘irreparable damage’ to the core values of the NHS.

In a clear attempt to re-shift the emphasis of the debate away from privatisation, the health secretary argued that competition was a vehicle for improving patient choice, but insisted he had no ideological wish to see more private sector providers.

He said: ‘What is important is for patients to be able to exercise choice. But then they say, “if we have choice, we also have competition, which, if conducted in the wrong way, could fragment those pathways of care that we’re looking for”.’

‘From my point of view, that is never the intention. Competition, [and] the tariff, are means to an end not an end in itself.’

Responding to a question from Nottingham GP Dr Chris Udenze, who asked if Mr Lansley could think of any public health services that haven’t ended up in the hands of multi-national corporations following marketisation, the health secretary insisted he was not creating a market, and had no quota for how much private involvement there should be in the NHS.

Mr Lansley said: ‘I know what a market is, and we are not creating a market. We are creating a public service, where we are using the benefits of competition to deliver that public service.’

Response: Lansley claims that he is not creating a market. Strange then that private health vultures believe that is exactly what he’s doing and anticipate a huge market for privatised health provision and health insurance on the US model.

HealthInvestor: Top health CEOs reveal fears for short-term

The NHS reforms will lead to “short-term pain” but huge long-term opportunities for independent healthcare providers, according to a survey of 20 leading chief executives in the sector.

Consultants The Parthenon Group interviewed 20 CEOs from the UK’s biggest healthcare companies including Nuffield Health, Barchester, Four Seasons, BMI and HCA.

Around 8/10 of respondents remain positive about NHS reform in the long term, with the government’s Any Qualified Provider (AQP) policy still likely to open up much of the NHS market.

Alistair Stranack, partner at The Parthenon Group’s healthcare practice, said he expects around 50% of the NHS’s £120bn funding will be up for grabs via AQP when the reforms are finally passed.

But continued bias against the private sector and worsening bureaucracy means the value of contracts actually awarded to the sector is unlikely to rise above 5-10% over the next five years, he said.

One CEO, responding to the survey, said “the bureaucratic burdeon of AQP is likely to slow down private sector participation and may prove more cumbersome than existing systems of choice like Choose and Book.”

There would be “some hiatus in the short term” but there was “no doubt we will see growth in the longer term as new areas are opened up to AQP,” another company leader commented.

Speaking at a Parthenon event in London, Nick Bosanquet, health economist at Imperial College, predicted that the current crisis in the NHS’s finances would lead to up to 25% of all healthcare in the UK being self-funded or insurance-based by 2018.

Patient care ‘hit by staff cuts’ – National – Lancaster Guardian

Patient care is suffering due to mounting workloads and staff cuts, according to a poll of nurses and midwives.

Two-thirds have thought of leaving the profession and 75% say the number of patients they are treating has increased in the last year.

Overall, 88% said their workload had gone up in the first year of the coalition Government, and 65% think the increase is undermining patient safety and care.

The poll of more than 2,000 nurses and midwives for Unison also found 61% had seen a reduction in staff numbers in their unit.

This could be through redundancy, staff not being replaced when they retire or leave, and less reliance on temporary staff.

More than 78% of those surveyed said their employer was making staff and budget cuts, with 36% reporting redundancies at their workplace.

NHS bosses told ‘hands-off’ over heart surgery – Main Section – Yorkshire Post

Parents, patients and surgeons yesterday gave NHS bosses an unequivocal message not to end children’s heart surgery in Leeds.

There was a determined mood, which at times turned combative, as hundreds of people demonstrated their opposition to plans which could see children’s heart surgery axed in Yorkshire.

Families brought toddlers along to the Royal Armouries in Leeds for a protest and two consultation meetings which attracted about 300 people.

Campaigners fear changes to services could spell the end of heart surgery at Leeds Children’s Hospital.

Leeds Save Our Surgery campaign: It’s ‘not a done deal’ – NHS chiefs – Latest News – Yorkshire Evening Post

NHS chiefs pledged the decision over the future of children’s heart surgery is “not a done deal”.

During a stormy public meeting parents angrily accused experts of talking “waffle” as they quizzed them about why the Leeds unit only features in one of out of four possible future set-ups, while Newcastle is in three.

A total of 500 people attended two consultation meetings yesterday at the Royal Armouries where NHS heads involved in the review of children’s heart surgery were questioned.

NHS reform: Lib Dems demand Monitor climbdown – politics.co.uk

Liberal Democrats fighting the government’s NHS reforms are demanding ministers back down over plans to make the health regulator promote competition.

The controversial health and social care bill places a statutory obligation on Monitor to encourage competition, to the frustration of senior Lib Dems.

politics.co.uk understands Nick Clegg has been presented with the party’s latest demands, as the “pause” over the legislation continues.

At the top of the list is a requirement that Monitor should promote coordination and collaboration among health agencies, as well as competition.

NHS Direct nurses fight plans to make them work more weekends | News | Nursing Times

Nurses working for NHS Direct have lodged a collective grievance after being told they will have to work more weekends in a bid to improve the organisation’s performance.

About 80, mostly band 6, nurses who work for the triage service on a part time basis are affected by the rota changes, Nursing Times understands.

They will require part time staff to work five weekends out of eight, the same number as full time staff. Currently the number of weekends worked by part time staff is worked out on a pro rata basis.

Baroness Young: Health Bill will stall in Lords | GP online

The Bill is part of primary legislation, but the government is expected to define much of the detail of consortia roles in supplementary regulations and guidelines. Regulations form part of secondary legislation and are subject to less parliamentary scrutiny. Guidelines are advisory and do not have legal force.

Many peers were unhappy that much of the detail on consortia would not be in the Health Bill as primary legislation, Baroness Young said.

‘Parliament gets quite antsy if the secondary stuff is not available, at least in draft form, before they have to pass the primary stuff, because you are buying a pig in a poke,’ she said. ‘We have to get work started on clarifying exactly what the role of the NHS Commissioning Board will be in holding consortia accountable.’

UNISON Press | Press Releases Front Page

Health Minister Andrew Lansley must do more than listen – he must hear and act on the barrage of criticism and opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill. This is the message from UNISON, the UK’s largest union, representing more than 450,000 health workers, in its response to the NHS ‘Listening Exercise’.

Christina McAnea, UNISON’s Head of Health, said:

“Andrew Lansley seems incapable of actually hearing the outcry from patients, public, staff, health experts, charities, health economists and even from within the coalition government.

“The public do not want a health service where people can buy their way to the top of the NHS queue, or where healthcare is rationed to make profits for private companies and their shareholders. We know that three quarters of bankruptcies in America are because of the high cost of health bills – no one wants the NHS to be dragged in that direction.

“The Government’s plans are riddled with conflicts of interest and undermine the accountability of the NHS to patients and the public. Patients will soon be priced out of care and see services, wards and hospitals lost without any arrangement to continue treatment.

“We believe the bill is too fatally flawed to be amended and should be dropped completely. “

Pink Floyd star to pay Gary McKinnon’s medical bills – Telegraph

Mr McKinnon has had regular therapy at a London hospital to deal with his depression and suicidal feelings linked to his fight against extradition to the US.

In February, Haringey Primary Care Trust stopped paying the £240 a month cost of Mr McKinnon’s sessions at a hospital in south London.

David Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s lead guitarist, stepped in and agreed to pick up the bills through royalties from record sales.

Janis Sharp, Mr McKinnon’s mother, who was in London yesterday for a march by disability groups against welfare benefit cuts, said: “David Gilmour has been amazing. He stepped in at a time of crisis when we did not know where to turn.”

No one from Haringey Teaching Primary Care Trust was available to comment last night.

 

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review