Future Forum recommends major amendments to Health Bill
pharmafile | June 14, 2011 | News story | | Health and Social Care Bill, NHS reforms
The role of GPs and competition in the government’s Health Bill should be greatly diluted and its reform programme substantially amended.
This is the message from the Future Forum, an independent body set up to report on the government’s beleaguered Health and Social Care Bill.
Professor Steve Field, chair of the Forum, said that during the eight-week ‘listening exercise’ on the reforms he heard ‘genuine and deep seated concerns’ from across the NHS, and has proposed major amendments to the Bill based on these.
The Bill in its current form is set to abolish primary care trusts, the bodies that are responsible for the health service’s £105 billion budget, and replace them with regional GP consortia by 2013.
The Bill also aimed at greater competition for services in the NHS, and would strengthen the role of Monitor, the economic regulator, to promote competition.
These proposals have been deeply unpopular and in recent months nearly every NHS group has opposed the strength and timing of the reforms.
Proposed changes
On the role of GPs, the Forum has urged the government to make arrangements for other healthcare professionals to sit alongside GPs when commissioning services.
On top of this, ‘multi-specialty clinical senates’ should be established to proved advice to consortia and to the body in charge of them, the Commissioning Board.
Field also said the 2013 deadline should be revoked, and consortia should only be formed and authorised when they are ready – until that point, the Board should take on their commissioning responsibilities.
A larger proportion of primary care trust managers, who were originally planned to be cut out of the NHS commissioning structure in their thousands, should also be retained to help consortia tackle the significant financial challenges the NHS faces in coming years, the Forum said.
Competition
The most unpopular part of the Bill was the role of Monitor, and its new position of promoting competition in the NHS.
The government has already had to backdown on its controversial ‘any willing provider’ clause, which now reads ‘any qualified provider’, but will now have to further dilute the role of Monitor.
The Forum made it clear that Monitor’s primary duty to promote competition ‘should be removed’ and the Bill must be amended to support ‘choice, collaboration and integration’.
These recommendations have now been formally sent to the government who will release their own decisions on the Bill in the coming weeks.
But all of this will come as little surprise given that just last week the UK prime minister David Cameron pre-empted the report by making his five-point pledge on the NHS, which included these very amendments.
Ben Adams
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