Battle over health reform begins again
pharmafile | September 7, 2011 | News story | | Health and Social Care Bill, NHS, NHS reforms
The battle over the future of the NHS has began again as the Health and Social Care Bill yesterday returned to Parliament.
The Government and health secretary Andrew Lansley are determined to push ahead with the reforms after concerted opposition forced them to heavily amend the plans in June.
The Conservative party hopes the many concessions and amendments will be enough to win the support of their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, who could otherwise block the Bill or force further changes.
In a press statement, Andrew Lansley reiterated the core principle of the reforms for the NHS:
• where the Secretary of State will continue, as now, to promote and be accountable for a comprehensive health service;
• driven by health professionals, not Whitehall and bureaucracy;
• where patients and the public are in the driving seat of their care, supported with more choice, information and control;
• with greater integration of services;
• with a new ‘Duty of Candour’, a contractual requirement on providers to be open and transparent in admitting mistakes, and;
• that’s focused on prevention and tackling the causes of poor health and health inequalities.
Despite reassurances, there remains considerable scepticism among the Liberal Democrats, some of whom believe the reforms are the first step towards breaking up the NHS as a comprehensive and tax-funded system.
The amendments adopted from the Future Forum consultation in June contain numerous safeguards aimed at protecting against price competition, privatisation and private companies ‘cherry-picking’ lucrative NHS contracts.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The Health and Social Care Bill will both safeguard the future of our NHS, and move us closer to a health service that puts patients at the heart of everything it does.
“It ensures that future generations can rely, as previous ones have – on an NHS that is always there, always improving and always free at the point of use.”
Lansley said the principles of the ‘modernisation plan’ are “patient power, clinical leadership, a focus on results” but many stakeholders say the detailed plan to put these principles into practice still needs work.
The independent health think The King’s Fund said the Future Forum significantly improved the Bill, including switching the focus away from creating a GP-led health service to an ‘integrated’ one where primary and secondary healthcare and social care work together more closely.
But it said: “We remain concerned that the scale of the structural changes set out in the Bill and the challenges associated with implementing them present risks that could damage NHS performance and harm patient care. The uncertainty of the past few months has caused significant instability within the NHS.”
Like many other stakeholder groups, The King’s Fund says the reforms are a distraction from the health service’s ‘key priority’ – the need to find £20 billion in savings by 2015.
The Government has pointed out that the Bill has already spent longer being scrutinised by Parliament than any public bill between 1997 and 2010 — 40 Committee sittings, and over 100 hours of debate. This record-breaking score is set to lengthen considerably, as the Bill is only now entering the fourth stage of an eleven stage legislative process, including a review by the House of Lords, where Lib Dem peers look certain to attempt further amendments.
Andrew McConaghie
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