NHS reforms criticised by healthcare journals
pharmafile | January 31, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | BMJ, GPs, Lansley, NHS reforms, nursing times
A trio of leading healthcare journals has come out against the government’s NHS reforms.
The British Medical Journal is leading the denouncement alongside the Health Service Journal and its sister paper, the Nursing Times.
In an editorial authored by the editors of all three journals, they said: “As the editors of the BMJ, Health Service Journal, and Nursing Times, we have divergent views on the government’s NHS reforms and its beleaguered Health and Social Care Bill.
“But on one thing we are agreed – that the resulting upheaval has been unnecessary, poorly conceived, badly communicated, and a dangerous distraction at a time when the NHS is required to make unprecedented savings.”
On the 8 February the Health and Social Care Bill will enter into the report stage of the House of Lords with a view to it becoming law by April.
The Bill is seeking to remove the current managers of the NHS and replace them with family doctors by 2013, whilst also increasing the role of competition in the health service.
The journals suggest that an independent commission be set up to oversee changes in the future, in order to negate what they believe has been an ‘unholy mess’.
The editorial added that the changes had ‘destabilised and damaged’ the health service.
This comes in the same month that the royal colleges of nursing and midwives announced that they now fully oppose the Bill.
The doctors’ union the BMA and the Royal College of GPs have long criticised the government’s plans, with many patient groups and healthcare bodies also failing to back the reform programme.
The NHS Alliance of GPs, led by the more entrepreneurial Dr Michael Dixon, is now a solitary voice in favour of the reforms amongst the growing chorus of dissent.
NHS staff unhappy with Lansley
On the same day that the journals release their opposition to the Bill, a YouGov poll shows that 71% of NHS staff surveyed believes that the health secretary Andrew Lansley is doing a bad job.
The survey, undertaken this month by over 1,600 NHS staff and paid for by the campaigning group 38 degrees, shows that 65% want the Bill withdrawn, with 66% saying that Lansley’s reforms will make the NHS worse.
Ben Adams
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