Bury the NHS reform bill, says BMJ
pharmafile | June 27, 2011 | News story | | Health and Social Care Bill, NHS reforms
The influential British Medical Journal has called on the government to abandon its healthcare reform bill, which it says has not been improved by the recent amendments.
The BMJ’s deputy editor Dr Tony Delamothe and editor Dr Fiona Godlee have made a scathing attack on the reforms and the changes agreed via the Future Forum.
Their editorial published today on BMJ.com states: “it would be better for the NHS, the government, and the people of England to sweep [the amended Health and Social Care Bill’s] mangled remains into an unmarked grave and move on.”
Dr Delamothe and Dr Godlee say the Future Forum recommendations will add further layers of bureaucracy to the health service and would leave “the NHS with a similar proportion of bureaucrats to the Austro-Hungarian empire on the eve of the first world war—and about as flat footed”.
The authors argue that the most important problem facing the health service is the need to make £20 billion of efficiency savings over the next four years and this urgent issue is not being addressed. And they question, as they have done in previous BMJ editorials: “What is the rationale for the changes proposed in the bill?”
Positive aspects of the bill could still remain, say the authors, adding that the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has acknowledged that legislation was not needed to implement some of the proposals, for example, primary care trusts could still be reformed to put GPs in the driving seat.
The authors conclude that the message for a future government “that spots a once in a generation opportunity to reform the NHS” is that “only a handful of companies in the world exceed the £100 billion turnover of the English NHS [and] none would have embarked on change in this harebrained fashion”.
Despite the vehemence of the BMJ’s opposition to the plans, the amended Bill is likely to have greater support among Liberal Democrats, who have claimed the amendments as a victory for their party.
Meanwhile, many Conservative MPs are also understood to be happy that much of Andrew Lansley’s original plan remains and the combined support from the two government coalition parties would be enough to see the Bill passed into law.
Andrew McConaghie
Related Content
Hospitals on ‘brink of collapse’, warn doctors
Hospitals across the UK are struggling to cope with emergency admissions, and a doctors’ group …
Storm clouds gathering over the NHS, say its leaders
NHS managers are using their annual conference to criticise the government’s savings programmes. The government …
Risk register spells out NHS reform risks
A leaked document that assesses problems with the government’s reform of the NHS has been …
