NHS Alliance defends GP commissioning
pharmafile | May 13, 2011 | News story | | GP commissioning, NHS Alliance, NHS reforms
The NHS Alliance has issued a staunch defence of the principle of GP commissioning – but warned the government to let doctors get on with it rather than interfering.
“If you want clinical leadership, then you must allow clinical leaders to lead,” said the group’s chairman, Dr Michael Dixon. “If they are seen as puppets by their peers, then no-one will follow them.”
In a speech to GP Commissioning Pathfinder leaders, Dixon pointed out that the idea has so far appeared in three incarnations: locality commissioners or fundholders, leaders within primary care groups, and practice-based commissioners.
“Each time, clinical leadership has been strangled by the dead hand of centralism, bureaucracy and red tape,” Dixon warned. “Don’t let this happen again.”
He also says that, in the teeth of a severe financial crisis, clinical commissioning must lie at the heart of NHS reform or “patients will bear the brunt of a system that will become incapable of delivering better health for better value”.
The warning comes as the coalition government continues its ‘listening’ exercise after the parliamentary progress of the controversial health bill was halted.
Speaking this week, health secretary Andrew Lansley insisted: “We have clear support for the principles of reform and we are listening and reflecting so we can give better effect to those principles.”
The government plans around 200 events across the country in which people can air their views on NHS reform, and 700 letters and 1,000 website comments have already been received on the issue, Lansley says.
There has been considerable opposition to the bill, with the NHS Confederation and British Medical Association among several key groups raising objections to the proposed speed of change.
Dixon’s concern is that the “serious” work of GP consortia risks being undermined “by sniping from the sides or threats of destabilisation of many vested interests who are opposed to clinical leadership, primary care or decentralisation”.
“Everyone agrees that the NHS needs to change and improve,” Dixon concludes. “Dumbing down GP commissioning and straight jacketing its leaders is not the way forward.”
Adam Hill
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