NHS competition will prevent postcode lottery, says Lansley
pharmafile | January 25, 2011 | News story | | NHS, NHS reforms, postcode prescribing
The government has pledged that value-based competition in the NHS will create “the very opposite of the postcode lottery”, following last week’s publication of the Health and Social Care Bill.
“Our plans to modernise the NHS will finally bring the power of competition to healthcare,” said health secretary Andrew Lansley.
“Not a free-for-all race to the bottom, but a race for quality, for excellence and for efficiency,” he went on. “This is about giving patients and commissioners real choice for the first time.”
There has been concern that the restructuring of health service provision, with GPs responsible for commissioning, will lead to variable care across the country – but Lansley said this already exists.
“The difference will be that future variation will be because local communities have chosen that variation,” he said.
The government’s mantra is that competition must be based on the quality of results for patients and not cost alone.
“Because of the nature of competition, some providers will perform better than others, but that does not mean that people will receive worse care than they do now,” Lansley insisted.
GPs, who see patients every day, and their clinical colleagues in the NHS, social care and local government, will decide what and how services are provided.
And, in a thinly-veiled threat, Lansley said GP consortia which deliver excellent services will benefit from more patients choosing them – while those that do not “will have a strong incentive to change and improve”.
The coalition’s key argument is that competition will actually drive up quality, even among relatively poor performers.
“Where there is effective competition, all producers are driven to raise their game, so that even those providers that are less successful improve, and that those served by them also receive a better service,” Lansley suggested.
Monitor, the future economic regulator, is tasked with acting in the interests of patients and the taxpayer.
Crucially, it will oversee price competition, which Lansley says will “be allowed only where it is deemed appropriate and where it will not harm quality of service”.
The Care Quality Commission will be responsible for healthcare quality and patient safety.
Adam Hill
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