Hunt prioritises elderly and cancer
pharmafile | October 10, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday put the care of the elderly at the centre of his vision for public health services.
In a speech at the Conservative Party’s conference in Birmingham, Hunt said the NHS’s biggest priority now is to “transform the way the health and social care system looks after older people”.
At what he called a “critical moment for the NHS”, he also announced a £15 million investment in the Cancer Radiotherapy Innovation Fund to expand the treatments offered to cancer patients by April 2013.
Hunt invoked the spirit of Great Britain’s Olympics success, saying the country owed a vote of thanks to ‘Team NHS’, while explaining that his father and mother had both worked in the NHS.
His speech was aimed squarely at positioning the Conservatives as defenders of public health services and not – as opponents of the Health and Social Care Act would have it – the NHS’s destroyers.
“The NHS does not belong to Labour: no party has a monopoly on compassion,” Hunt said. “The NHS belongs to all of us.”
In one of several sideswipes at the opposition, he scorned leader Ed Miliband’s pledge to repeal the Act as ‘utterly disingenuous’ and criticised Labour’s ‘disaster with [NHS] IT contracts’ while in government.
He praised his predecessor Andrew Lansley’s reforms, saying they were “brave, right and will make our NHS stronger”.
Hunt said he now wanted to be the health secretary who “transforms the culture of the system to make it the best in the world at looking after older people”.
This means those in the NHS who fall short of the standards of care required would be found out. “I have asked the Department of Health and the Care Quality Commission how to ensure health managers are accountable,” he said.
“Next year, hospitals are to be assessed by the number of people who would recommend the care they receive to friends and family,” he went on. “Good care matters as much as good treatment.”
On social care, he pledged that next year’s Care and Support Bill would contain the commitment that “no-one will be forced to sell their house in their lifetime – a historic change”.
Leaving slightly more wriggle-room for the government on another key recommendation, Hunt said the coalition would implement the Dilnot cap of up to £35,000 paid by an individual towards their care in old age “as soon as we are able”.
The introduction of the Cancer Radiotherapy Innovation Fund is part of an attempt to improve cancer survival rates, which he wanted to make “the best in Europe”.
The £15 million will be used to speed up the use of Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy across the NHS so that up to 8,000 more cancer patients can benefit from it.
“We will guarantee access to all innovative radiotherapy where it is appropriate and cost-effective,” Hunt pledged.
The technique targets more precise doses of radiation at a tumour, while minimising the impact on surrounding healthy tissue, and is particularly beneficial for patients with head and neck cancers, the government says.
