Lansley needs to get his quiet friends talking
David Blackburn 6:26pm
Is Andrew Lansley hearing rather than listening? Dame Barbara Hakin, one of the
Department of Health’s national managing directors, has written a letter to
some GPs that suggests the pace of health reform will not be affected by the ‘legislative pause’. Hakin writes:
‘Everyone within the Department of Health is very aware of the support shown by the GP community to date and we have been struck by the energy and enthusiasm demonstrated in pathfinders across the country. Therefore, although the Government has taken the opportunity of a natural break in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, we are very keen that the momentum we have built to date should not stop.’
On the face of it, this is another PR disaster for the hapless Health Secretary. But that perception is misleading. The letter was sent to ‘pathfinder' consortia: the thousands of GPs’ surgeries across England that are eager to take control of commissioning. The government is determined not to dilute the fundamentals of the NHS reforms; therefore, it must press on with its key allies in the health service. And, as you can see from the map of pathfinder consortia below, the government is not short of friends.
Besides, Lansley hasn’t simply dreamt these reforms up. Pockets of GP commissioning already exist and they are being used as an example to aspiring consortia and recalcitrant sceptics alike. The government can’t sit on its hands until the end of the pause, especially as the reforms’ fundamentals are expected to survive largely unscathed. It would be far more damaging if the government lay inert for months and then had to rush towards implementation in 2013. Improvements and amendments, it is argued, can be added later.
So, this letter is not all that surprising. However, there is no explanation why the government is so reticent about its allies, especially as the opposition is voluble and organised. This leaked letter looks like a PR disaster for Lansley; and, in a sense, it is.
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LYNNE HEAL
April 18th, 2011 6:52pm Report this commentits un beleiveable here in UK multiple scelerosis patients are NOT being helped for angioplasty and Savitex via our so called free NHS .Worldwide UK come last for MS
Verity
April 18th, 2011 7:38pm Report this commentWhat the hell is a "pathfinder"?
Sounds like nouveau socialist pretentiousness to me.
REPay
April 18th, 2011 7:45pm Report this commentThe impression given by Downing Street, Clegg and the BBC is that there is serious opposition to the reforms from within the NHS and the BMA etc. It seems that this could be an exaggeration - one of the difficulties of any NHS reform is that opponents are always given maximum aitrime - whoever is in power!
TrevorsDen
April 18th, 2011 8:10pm Report this commentthe angioplasty treatment is being trialled
http://www.patient-experience.com/index.php/multiple-sclerosis-and-ccsvi/
If GPs want to go ahead and prepae they should do - its alreadu=y been operating in Cumbria.
daniel maris
April 18th, 2011 8:55pm Report this commentIsn't "pathfinder" one of those nonsense words that makes you want to reach for your delete button?
This is just typical modern management speak: fake consultation, fake enthusiasm and fake thinking.
I predicted from the outset that these so called reforms would be a political disaster. So it has proved. If the Tories want to drive over the cliff having arrived at the cliff, that's their privilege.
Martin Rathfelder
April 18th, 2011 9:01pm Report this commentAs Dr Buckman says - the fact that the passengers get into the lifeboats does not mean that they wanted the ship sunk.
Frank P
April 18th, 2011 9:44pm Report this commentNye Bevan was the first to encounter the wrath of the Medical/Clinical mafias. He sold out to them and it has been uphill ever since.
What the NHS can't do is to stop people getting old and eventually popping their clogs. Once you come to terms with that, then you realise that the NHS is just another cash cow for exploiters various, not least 'patients'themselves, who abuse it more than any other group. If the NHS had to deal only with people who are unwitting victims of accident and disease, rather than those who indulge in self-abuse, recklessness and pretense, it would manageable and affordable. And if quacks ceased over-prescription of the placebo product of the Pharmas in return for kick-backs and boondoggles, the insurance companies would be able to provide a affordable premiums to cover genuine accidents and unavoidable illness - and finance geriatric care also, while still making fat profits for shareholders.
While we all moan about the callousness of clinicians and carers within the NHS, most of them have been driven into cynicism by piss-taking malingerers, junkies, drunks and dead-beats who think they have a right to abuse NHS staff, often by assault, and receive tender loving care after abusing their own bodies and brains as a result of hedonistic stupidity. The bureaucracy that is built on any nationalised service is always top heavy and self-serving - with jobs for the boys for political cronies. The genuine punters get caught in the crossfire. Human frailty/stupidy/selfishness/greed ensured from the off that the NHS was never going to work. And while it's not working it costs the taxpayer a fortune and always will for as long as it persists.
As I said last week - the Secretary of State for Health is usually reserved as a graveyard for internecine politics. Hope Lansley has his directorship niche sorted with one of the big Pharmas already, because his political career is already cattle-trucked. By the glum look he carries around with him, he knows it too.
Local Local
April 18th, 2011 11:01pm Report this commentI heard on R4 today, the former Chief Exec of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority apologising for her organisation's failure to spot lots of people dying at Stafford Hospital.
Apparently, the managers at the hospital told the managers at the SHA that everything was alright, so they didn't take it any further.
We can easily win the arguement for Lansley's reforms if we highlight the abject failure of the existing bureaucracy of PCTs and SHAs and show how Doctors commissioning doctors is the norm in places like Germany, where health outcomes are vastly better than in the UK.
Get on the front foot - fight for it.
TrevorsDen
April 18th, 2011 11:41pm Report this commentYou only need to look at the treatments given by the NHS to realise that Frank P is talking cobblers.
growing old is certainly a massive problem - which makes it risible that people should call for its abolition or that there should be cuts in spending.
We all grow old and shock horror despite Frank P's claims we also (and our families) get innocently ill.
Greater use of generic drugs is all part of the QIPP efficiency programme.
AAE
April 19th, 2011 12:15am Report this commentWorth saying that in Germany, if you go to A&E on a Saturday and a scan shows a lump or tumour, you'll be on the table first thing Monday morning.
Andrew Fletcher
April 19th, 2011 8:31am Report this commentThe Cumbria "pathfinder" GP commissioning boards are rehiring the redundant PCT staff to do the admin!! Predictable I suppose
Frank P
April 19th, 2011 9:21am Report this commentTrev.
I'm just an amateur in the 'cobblers' market, boyo. If you really want to see some cobblers, read this feckin' gobbledygook:
http://www.pharmafield.co.uk/features/2010/02/Can-pharma-respond-to-the-QIPP-agenda
Moreover, I'm prepared to concede that your own brand of cobblers trumps mine on any given day.
bojimbo
April 19th, 2011 12:01pm Report this commentConsidering that most of the government are under BUPA , what do they know about the NHS ?
PayDirt
April 19th, 2011 1:46pm Report this commentIt will take a revolution to change the NHS. The reforms go round in circles only. When they finally get to link an individual's NI contributions to level of service given, the Health Service will be on firmer ground.
Magnolia
April 19th, 2011 4:13pm Report this commentQuite a few articles supporting the health reforms recently on Con Home as well as here so it looks like there's a drive to save them and fight back.
I've pretty much said all I'm going to say about them. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
I'm also interested in how the tuition fees reform will go.
It looks to me like managers and 'institutions' will do anything rather than sack staff to cut costs. The education and health reforms will result eventually in staff being sacked because I refuse to believe that there are enough young mugs out there to take on the tuition fees debt at the proposed costs and I also believe that there's not enough money for the all encompassing health service that we currently have. I agree with Frank P there and he has said that his other half was in the NHS so he will have some idea about it all.
The question is will it work or will it just alienate the public against Conservatives.
Will the closing hospitals and universities be the bad ones that get replaced or taken over by a service that is preferred because it's better?
I think that there will be problems and that they will be severe and sudden enough to let Labour back in but I do hope I'm wrong.
David Hickson
April 20th, 2011 4:04am Report this commentApril 2011 - NHS needs to be made "free at the point of need" NOW
PCTs told to deal with 1000 cases of GPs in breach of their contract by using banned expensive telephone numbers!
See the briefing - tiny.cc/GPPCTs
National list of cases - tiny.cc/clusters
Mel68
April 22nd, 2011 3:08pm Report this commentI believe Mental Health Services are going to suffer big time with the Mental Health Restructure of the planned Step 4 which has not been thought out properly things should be left alone in order to help service users being supported back to recover!!!!
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