NHS blueprint under fire
pharmafile | December 20, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | CB, CCGs, Labour, NHS
The NHS Commissioning Board’s blueprint for care has promised extra funds for health providers and greater transparency for patients.
Board chief executive Sir David Nicholson said: “There are big challenges – not least the financial backdrop – but we must be ambitious.”
Focusing on outcomes, making commissioning decisions locally through clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and giving patients more information are among the key planks which underpin Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients in 2013-14.
A quality premium will be payable to CCGs that achieve or exceed four national and four local achievement measures. Data on survival rates and quality of care for various specialities at consultant level will also be published.
Perhaps most boldly, it pledges “real-terms funding increases in all areas”, allocating £65.6 billion for commissioning by CCGs and local authorities – an overall rise of 2.6 per cent.
Each CCG will be given an equal 2.3% increase in funding compared to their share of primary care trust spending in 2012-13.
Yet not everyone has been swept along with the Board’s talk of a ‘revolution for patients’ – the BMA is particularly sceptical, for example. The organisation’s council chair Mark Porter damned the Board’s plans with faint praise, calling them ‘extremely ambitious’.
“We are concerned that the quality premium could exacerbate health inequalities, as CCGs in deprived populations could find it more difficult to achieve any financial award available,” Porter explained.
And data about consultants could be misconstrued, he said: “Basic mortality figures alone could mislead patients because they fail to take into account other factors that might have contributed to the death of patients.”
Meanwhile shadow health secretary Andy Burnham says the devil is in the detail on the Board’s financial plans.
“When people in the NHS read the small print of this statement, they will quickly discover that the reality does not match the spin,” he insisted. “Promises of real-terms increases will melt away when they add up the full cost of what they are being asked to do.”
Funds for patient care are being held back to pay for restructuring, he claimed, something that Labour said was ‘simply unjustifiable’.
However, Jo Webber, interim director of policy at the NHS Confederation, welcomed the Board’s blueprint.
“It is really encouraging to see the NHS Commissioning Board has listened to the service and produced guidance which is far less prescriptive although no less challenging than similar documents that have gone before it,” Webber said.
CCGs would need to work closely with local health and social care organisations to create joined up services, and balancing national and local incentives will be crucial if the system is to work, the Confederation believes.
“The increased focus on information and transparency provides a real opportunity to empower patients to hold their services to account,” Webber added.
Adam Hill
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