This document describes why the way we provide health and care needs to change and the plan to modernise the NHS, and invites readers to get involved in the process.
Read and comment on extracts:
- The cost of treatment is rising
- Our population is changing
- Aiming to be the best in the world
- Giving professionals more freedom
- Giving patients more power
- Bringing together the best providers of healthcare
- Making services more local
Or download the full leaflet:
Leaflet too highly formatted. Difficult to print off cheaply and quickly and not easy to read.
Surely people want to become GP’s to help people, not sort out commissioining, contracts, etc etc….. I would imagine, that there will be fewer GP in future years due to this change.
The Government have embarked on a carefully crafted media campaign to discredit NHS managers. Are they that stupid to think that the NHS runs itself? It is a hugely complex organisation dealing with life and death situations every day and they suggest it can be run by the likes of Tesco? I am concerned about Mr Lansleys relationship with private health providers and suspect that his proposals to allow GPs to commission services is founded on his desire to see the NHS fail so that he can blame them and privatise it after all.
None of these leaflets sets out any convincing evidence that these changes will have the desired effects. Not one NHS reorganisation in recent times has brought the efficiencies claimed or reduced transaction costs. Please stopped saying 80% of the country is covered by pathfinders, most are old PBC clusters at this time. And, what choice do they as the government are abolishing pcts? Where’s the mandate anyway. The case for evolutionary reform is made but not this reform.
Same arguments trotted out as if we are all complete idiots who did not understand the first time. I do not need it all explaining again-I understand and I do not agree with it!
The seven reasons given for the NHS
remod are only sound bites being used by Lansley and his diminishing number of supporters.The NHS is already one of the best medical providers in the world.Of course change is needed,it’s called evolution and happens organically under all good management structures.It’s known as Lean Manufacturing,Continuous Improvement etc. What is wrong with target setting and measurements ?? It’s a system that tells you where you are, what you have achieved and where you want to be.These are systems used in all successful businesses.Ask Nissan and their suppliers,Hotpoint,Hoover et al. Lansley states things are wrong but is never specific. If you see something wrong, put it right and move on. It’s too expensive to throw babies out with bathwater. I,like Lansley, have spoken to staff within the NHS.My GP, consultants and nurses who looked after me,all said the same thing. “There’s nothing wrong with the NHS.If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I believe Lansley has failed to see the big picture because he has buried his head in too much detail.The NHS may need a tweak or two,as do all businesses,but Lansley’s monument to himself is a step too far.
I don’t think that handing billions of pounds to small private organisations (practices) is a good idea. No experience of running a big business or handling all that lovely bureaucracy handed out by DH.
Mr Lansley should focus on reviewing the NHS economy before anything else. The provider/commissioner economy is divisive at a time we need people to work together. On top of this, acute tariffs are driving a cottage industry of AWP and tender exercises – in the mistaken belief that out of hospital care must be cheaper. Hospitals require a fair casemix to be viable – deal with this rubbish economics asap Mr Lansley!!
How can we avoid falling foul of competition law if we do not accept ‘any willing provider’ on cost grounds but wish to avoid cherry picking? Unless this can be done many NHS organizations will loose their straight forward and and profitable work and be left with difficult patients and problems which will have a disastrous effect on their viability.
This leaflet is hugely deceptive. It does nothing to link the radical restructuring set out by the government to the real problems of growing demand. It fails to understand that a plethora of providers organised by the invisible hand of the market will not magically deliver more cost effective services (even after the privateers have ripped out their profit margin). And it does not even attempt to set out how a system governed by competition law, and run by unaccountable agencies (supported by management consultancies, who will rip out their profit margin) even allows, let alone encourages, local decision making to prevail. Poor quality misinformation does not a listening exercise make.
It is sucessive governments that have created the bureaucracy, top down targets and tick boxes. The NHS cannot refuse the demands of the Government, and quite rightly chose to employ managers to deal with these, rather than clinical staff. The solution of this governement is to blame managers, rather than remove the bureaucracy that government creates. NHS managers would happily stop carrying out these tasks if they were given the freedom to do so, and then cut management costs accordingly. I find the graphic on page 8 particularly offensive.
This leaflet is blatant propoganda – is this even allowed under the rules of purdah? Where is the evidence that that dismantling one buraucracy and spending millions on building another will address the issues identified? Where is the evidence that targets have been terrible for patient care when everyone agrees that the NHS has never been in a better state? And if hospital doctors need their time freeing up to focus on patients, why should GPs have to spend all their time on buraucary instead? Who will train the extra GPs required if doctor time is spent running a health system?
The reforms will not give more power to the patient, just more power to consortia, patients already have choice.
Take away the purchaser provider split and have primary and secondary care working collaboratively, take away artificial market mechanisms then you’d really cut buraucary. Are you really going to allow hospitals to go bust? Even the private sector aren’t going to be keen to snap up struggling organisations with huge PFI debts round their neck.
Change may be needed, but not this change.
Thanks for your comments.
Regarding ‘purdah’ – the period preceding elections – the Department of Health follows Cabinet Office guidelines on the conduct of civil servants.
I couldn’t agree more with you.
The leaflet is patronising and disingenuous. Where is the evidence that the NHS is not world class. If it is so bad then why did Barack Obama spend his first term in office trying to push through health reforms nearer the UK model?
Yes, drug treatments are costly. Do something about the pharmaceutical companies then instead of targeting the institution.
Amazing that they are prepared to bail out failing banks but not hospitals. This demonstrates exactly the Government’s priorities.
The leaflet is embarrassing.
PCTs are full of people who have had a clinical career and are now involved in commissioning and improving NHS services, is this not what the govt. are trying to encourage? I do not see the sense of whole scale top down NHS reform, which scraps everything and will take years to get up to speed. I do not agree with Lansleys changes. GPs are good at being GPs why not give more opportunity for GPs to have a greater involvement in decision making in PCTs and let them carry on being good GPs?
The document is a study in soundbites and misdirection. The demonisation of an entire profession in ‘Working Together for a Stronger NHS’ is both unjustified and offensive. Many managers in the NHS are highly qualified professionals in multiple business disciplines. Managers have jumped to the tune of successive governments implementing half baked polictical and beurocratic backside covering idea’s beacuse they’ve had to not because they agreed. As a country we can’t afford the NHS with year on year rising demand – we get it – we are not stupid. However, there won’t be any ‘listening’ to how we could tackle this without destroying the best of what the NHS has to offer and there won’t be any meaningful debate with the country about that because it’s far easier to blame managers and transfer the responsibility to Doctors then politicians can blame them. Lansley reforms will not deliver anything but more cost and then more beurocracy to try and stem that rising cost.
The Title Working Together belies the problem – it is similar to other catch-phrases at the moment – we are not all in it together! It is yet more Top Down and not enough listening to what is going on in the delivery of services or even considering what patients truly want.
Mr Lansley has had too close a relationship with G.P.’s as is well documented and even closer relationships with private practices. How can he be unbiased in his approach to reform?
This document and other proposals are about taking the “N” out of the NHS and privatisation by not even the back door but quite blatantly by the front door.
It is disgusting to link private companies involved in Healthcare Provision with worthy charites e.g. the Hospice Movement. Within the hospice movement an increased amount of funding had been provided from central governement funding and local authority funding as well as the generous contributions from its many supporters. I am sure a wholly provided service would also be very much appreciated by those who require palliative care. End of life care says a lot about the society who provides it and it should not be at the whim of a government only interested in the best “bids for business”.
Thanks for your comments Mary. Are you referring to ‘Any Qualified Provider’? http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/bringing-together-the-best-providers-of-healthcare/
The leaflet throughout refers to Britain and yet the proposals in the Bill are specific to England. How can anybody judge whether the information and statements in the leaflet are correct when such a fundamental error has been made? The map and pie chart on page 15 is simply a nonsense and would not be acceptable from a 12 year old in school. The leaflet is so lacking in proper argument as to be laughable. There is room for intelligent consideration of Mr Lansley’s proposals but this leaflet does not help that process at all.
This document is one of the most ridiculous pieces of propaganda that I have seen a British Government put out in my lifetime, it attempts to use emotional blackmail and misinformation to attempt to persuade people that this government actually believes in the NHS when the actual proposed policies will slowly rip the NHS as we know it apart in future years. It is disengenuous, innacurate, simplistic and based upon the principle that by stirring simple prejudice (ie ‘all people in suits are bad/all doctors are good’) that people will be persuaded to take a course of action that has significant implications which are not made clear to the audience.
Thanks for all your comments, which will be fed back to the NHS Future Forum.
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