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NHS reform and what it means to you
A protest takes place outside Sheffied Town Hall against the Health and Social Care bill which could lead to parts of the NHS being privatised
RARELY has a piece of Government legislation faced such opposition.
The Coalition wants to completely change the way the NHS is run, putting control of its budget in the hands of GPs rather than bureaucrats, and opening up services to be run by private companies.
But opposition to the reforms has escalated to the point where Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was last week forced to make 136 changes to the legislation, and an unnamed Downing Street source was quoted as saying the veteran Tory should be ‘taken out and shot’ over his handling of the matter.
Despite the national furore over the proposal a group of eight Sheffield GPs, a nurse, four advisers and three officials are preparing the ground for the policy to become reality.
If the reforms pass through Parliament, the new Clinical Commissioning Group will take responsibility for the Sheffield’s £1 billion health budget in April 2013, little over a year away.
The group is already running in ‘shadow’ form and has taken over 71 per cent - £709 million - of the city’s health commissioning budget from the Primary Care Trust, which will be abolished next year.
Dr Tim Moorhead, a GP from Oughtibridge and elected chairman of the group, told The Star the new system offers family doctors a chance to control the way the system is run.
“This makes it much more driven by the doctors, rather than us just being consulted,” he said.
“That’s the big difference in our approach. We are trying to get the best out of the new arrangements for Sheffield patients.”
Dr Moorhead - a member of the British Medical Association, which vehemently opposes the proposals - admitted the plan has its flaws.
“The concerns of the professional bodies are noted and we share many of those concerns,” he said.
“But we have an unparalleled opportunity to really change the health system for the better.”
And he was scathing about Labour MPs’ demands that the whole reforming process simply be abandoned.
“No change is not an option. The way the health economy in Sheffield was going, it was becoming unaffordable, mainly because of the way health payments were organised.
“We were doing too many procedures in hospital, and it doesn’t have to be done that way.”
Ian Atkinson, interim chief executive of the Primary Care Trust, has been appointed chief operating officer of the new clinical commissioning group.
He agrees with Dr Moorhead’s vision for the future of the service - and thinks they can achieve it despite having to make around £19m of savings this year.
“The test is making the efficiency while delivering better services,” he said.
“Not everyone who goes to A&E needs to. Not every patient needs to be sent to diagnostics.
“Hospital costs a tremendous amount of money. We want to treat as many people as possible elsewhere.”
Mr Atkinson added: “This reform is about trying to bring some really good GPs and doctors around a table with consultants, to break down the divide between the hospitals and the GPs.
“The real test of the reform is whether we can deliver that.”
Dr Moorhead said: “We need to keep our hands on the tiller, to be engaged and have the debate.
“The top-down approach has been tried time and time again. The bottom-up approach takes the redesign lead from the doctors and hopefully from patients and the public as well.
“Provided we have freedom to do that I think we can have a great deal of benefit.”
Dr Moorhead admitted opening the provision of health services to ‘any qualified provider’ - which includes private companies - is the sticking point for many people.
“The emotive issue is the risk of privatisation in the NHS.
“Yes, the policy opens up a possibility of privatisation, but I think we are in a strong place already in Sheffield.
“We don’t want to start breaking things up that work. Privatisation would only be a last resort.”
Much opposition to the reforms has been based on a view that doctors should focus on treating patients, and leave financial matters to managers.
Dr Moorhead said: “We aren’t going to become financial experts overnight.
“But we are experts in dealing with patients’ health - doing it wrong costs more.
“If we can get patients’ experience right it costs less. You do it once and you do it right.
“We have a lot of expertise in Sheffield in health service management, these people are there to advise us.”
And he pledged to oppose outsourcing the administrative side of the commissioning service to management consultants.
“I am hoping we will change the administrative side really quite quickly - it won’t look the same as the PCT.
“That’s where privatisation is potentially on the cards, but that’s something I wouldn’t be supportive of.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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Comments
There are 6 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
1graybags
Monday, February 20, 2012 at 01:54 PMhopealoneaintenough - get to the point mate! The staff at the NHS hospital would obviously not be pleased to see him, he's the guy trying to get them working harder, more efficiently and to become more accountable.
hopealoneaintenough
Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 11:02 PMWe can now reveal what really happened at Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary last Tuesday.. On Tuesday past, Conservative Central Office announced that the PM was to make a high profile visit to an NHS Hospital, to a) bolster support for his NHS reform,and b) raise issue of binge drinking. But, as I outlined in my previous post, there was an incident at the hospital. I can now reveal the details of what is alleged to have happened. The staff were never informed of the Prime Minister's visit, and were affronted when Cameron arrived at their Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary. I am told that the entire staff refused to speak to the Prime Minister, and this caused quite a stir. It transpires that the shift manager (or matron- I cannot confirm which) was left to 'handle the PM'. Cameron was also assigned close police protection for his entire time in the hospital. The PM was shepherded into the back corridors to give his interview in isolation, apparently because the grimaces and frowns of staff members would have caused an embarrassment. One staff member joked that the 'only persons who were smiling was his police protection'. One staff member launched a verbal volley of criticisms at the Prime Minister for breaking his promise on the NHS reforms. The content of the abuse centred around Cameron foisting unwanted reforms upon NHS staff who were unanimously opposed to them. The angry staff member was led away, and is now facing disciplinary action. The rest of the staff were explicitly instructed that, pending the outcome of the disciplinary hearing, they were to keep quiet about the incident. It was under these auspices that staff have been sworn to silence. None of them are willing to go on record and say what happened, even though 4 separate sources have confirmed similar versions of the same event. Three of the sources stated that they feared for their jobs if they went public. I will repeat what I said yesterday. Prime Minister, David Cameron, you can end all of this speculation by instructing your spokesperson to issue a polite rebuttal. It might well be that these stories are fabricated (they sometimes are), but in the face of these allegations, I am very concerned that so little has appeared in our press. I am most concerned with the fact that the local press have not reported this incident. How many journalists did you allow to accompany you on the visit? If the story is true, it shows that David Cameron does not have the support among the health service for his reforms. These reforms are ideologically motivated and unwanted, and if the Risk Registers turn out to be correct, they will irreversibly destroy our NHS. http:eoin-clarke.blogspot.com201202we-can-now-reveal-what-really-happened.html
hopealoneaintenough
Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 01:15 PM"The government e-petition to Drop the Bill now has over 140,000 signatures. . Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs): The Department of Health has published spending estimates for future Clinical Commissioning Groups. The largest is for Peterborough and Cambridgeshire (Lansley's patch) but this does cover 2 previous PCTs. Sheffield is also one of the largest. There are one or two tiny ones where particular practices or consortia are still insisting on going it alone. There are currently 244 prospective CCGs, down from 335 a year ago. One anonymous commentator on the Health Service Journal website writes "I'm designing a database of CCGs (not very interesting I know, long story) and it's remarkable how many have the same geography as the PCT. There are a few pockets across the country that look different, but many of these seem to be merging. Given the last 19 months, what an UNBELIEVABLE waste of time this has all been...." Another offers an interesting slant: "Two to three years ago GPs were complaining that the bureacrats at the PCTs were stifling Pratice based commissioning and not letting them implement their interesting little scheme which wouldn't save any money but would improve the quality of care. Eighteen months ago GPs were saying great now we have control we can sack all these bureacrats and we can implement as many of these little schemes as we want. Six months ago GPs were suddenly realised life was more complicated that they thought and realised that they needed these bureacrats to help them implement their schemes. Now GPs are staring down the the double barrels of the shot gun which is increasing demand and no additional resources. They are also realising that the bureaucrats that used to protect them from such realities are no longer doing so and that they have to make some big decisions. So they are either walking away or clustering together into what looked like the good old PCTs. If there is anything good that has come out of this last 15 months it is that more GPs now realise that: a. Commissioning is hard b. Big savings have to be made and that means big changes c. Their behaviour is a major contributor to both the problems and the solutions. What we need to do now is scrap this bill and start again with another one that puts hospital consultants in charge. If they can go through the same learning process we may end up with a system that works"
CharlesWood
Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 11:13 AMI love all these people calling for privatisation - I bet they've all (including family and friends spanning generations) used the NHS. If they want private health care go get it - it's out there already, you have a choice. The NHS keeps private health prices down, the NHS isn't perfect (a lot of damage was done when marketisation was introduced in the 80s90s) but it's there every day saving lives, putting patient's health before profit and is something to be defended. Hasn't the privitisation of rail, gas and electric taught the public anything about what lays ahead if the NHS is broken up and thrown to private profit hungry companies? If the government doesn't listen to what 99% of the health care profession says about scrapping the bill, the same as what the vast majority of informed members of public are saying, it goes to show you how much of a dictatorship we now live in. Democracy is dead, long live the dictators!
Ukip
Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 07:53 AMWhat people have to realise is that the NHS isn't free for those who put something back into society. NI contributions aren't the only tax revenue that pays for the NHS, it will come from VAT, fuel duty etc. Personally I would like to go one step further and for me not to pay through the tax system for the NHS and have a private scheme. My health in my hands is even better than the GP's.
1graybags
Friday, February 17, 2012 at 08:56 PMputting control of the NHS budget in the hands of GPs rather than bureaucrats, saves money and reduces a tier of "suits". Of course Liebour and their cronies have to paint it as a bad thing.
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