Health reforms face renewed opposition
pharmafile | September 6, 2011 | News story | Sales and Marketing | NHS reforms
The government’s health reforms in England are coming under attack once again as the legislation returns to Parliament.
After the summer recess opponents of the reforms are once again lining up to attack the government and its plans for the NHS – with doctors’ group the BMA chief among them.
The British Medical Association has resumed its opposition, saying the changes represent an “unacceptably high risk to the NHS” and its principles of equal access.
The Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Nursing have also made it clear they do not support the reforms, and are asking for significant changes to the current Bill.
BMA Council Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum has written to all MPs warning them against the government’s health reforms, arguing that at present they still represent an “unacceptably high risk to the NHS, threatening its ability to operate effectively and equitably, now and in the future”.
The organisation says some concerns were addressed by the Future Forum consultation and the subsequent changes, but the BMA still believes the legislation should be withdrawn or else be amended further.
Meldrum further warns there “continues to be an inappropriate and misguided reliance on ‘market forces’ to shape services” with the Bill embedding “a more central role for choice without a full consideration of the consequences”, including the “potential to destabilise local health economies”.
He also says “insufficient thought has been applied to the unintended knock-on effects and long-term consequences of proposals in the Bill”, for example on medical education and training and on public health, and that there is now “excessive complexity and bureaucracy”.
Meldrum reiterated the BMA’s main argument that the NHS should not be undergoing major reform at a time when the service is required to make £20 billion in savings by 2015.
Debating the amendments
The Health and Social Care Bill will be debated again today and tomorrow in Parliament.
This comes after the government was forced to concede a number of amendments to its reforms just before start of the summer recess.
The changes came after an eight-week consultation by the Futures Forum in April and May, which showed the growing ill-feeling toward the Bill.
Key amendments included watering down the role of Monitor and its duty to ‘promote competition’, and to reduce the focus on GPs as the sole arbiters of the NHS budget, and instead make sure that other healthcare professionals will be involved in commissioning services.
Primary care doctors were to be formed into ‘GP consortia’ and be the leaders of the new commissioning structure, but the amendments state that they must now take on at least one nurse and hospital doctor, and be re-named ‘Clinical Commissioning Groups’ to reflect this change.
Ben Adams
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