UK government confirms major amendments to Health Bill
pharmafile | June 15, 2011 | News story | | Health and Social Care Bill, NHS reforms
The government will make major amendments to its controversial Health and Social Care Bill, including minimising the scope of regulator Monitor to promote integration, rather than competition.
The changes will also see other healthcare professionals sit alongside GPs in new clinical commissioning groups.
They come after an independent report by the Future Forum recommended the government rein in its reform ambitions.
The government has accepted the core recommendations of the Forum and will now focus on integrated and joined-up care, rather than letting primary care lead commissioning.
New clinical commissioning groups will replace GP consortia and, although still led by GPs, each group will have to include at least one registered nurse and a hospital doctor.
Monitor’s role will also be watered down, and the government will remove its powers to promote competition as if it were an end in itself, one of the key recommendations of the Future Forum.
Competition for services will still exist however, but only where it will ‘improve quality and efficiency for patients’.
GP consortia deadline revoked
Another major change to the planned reforms concerns the 2013 date for creating clinical commissioning groups, this now been revoked and these groups will now have as much time as they need to take on the budget in their area.
Where a clinical commissioning group is not able to take on some or all aspects of commissioning, the local arms of the central Commissioning Board – the body in charge of the clinical groups – will commission on its behalf.
They will do this using Primary Care Trust (PCT) managers, the current bodies set up to diffuse the £105 billion NHS budget.
PCTs will still be abolished by 2013, but more of their managers will be retained to help commissioning groups establish themselves.
All clinical commissioning groups will have the right to take on full responsibility, once they have demonstrated they are ready.
However, some will only be authorised in part and others will only be established in ‘shadow’ form, according to the government.
BMA welcomes changes
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman doctors group the BMA, said: “We are pleased that the government has accepted the Future Forum’s core recommendations, and that there will be significant revisions to the Health and Social Care Bill.
“We will need to look carefully at the details of the changes, but it seems clear that what we are likely to see is a very different Bill, and one which puts the reforms on a better track.”
He welcomed the shift in the role of Monitor away from promoting competition, but said there will need to be “robust safeguards to ensure that vital services are not destabilised by unnecessary competition”.
Given the major changes to do the Bill, MPs will now have another opportunity to scrutinise the amendments, meaning it will be sent back to the Committee Stage at the House of Commons.
Ben Adams
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