Lansley’s health reform plans raise many questions

ANDREW LANSLEY, the UK Government’s Health Secretary’s future is not looking very healthy. He avoided the fate of Patricia Hewitt, one of his Labour predecessors, of being booed at the Royal College of Nursing’s Annual Conference. He wanted to avoid the disaster that befell Tony Blair at the WI Conference too! The problem is the NHS Reforms handing control of the bulk of the NHS budget in England to GP practice groups.

GPs are independent contractors paid by the NHS to do family doctoring. Paying them to buy hospital services is a big stretch. The problem lies with this wondrously vague term “commissioning”. What does it mean? Is it a form of competitive tendering for which hospital will do 500 cataract ops and 300 hip replacement ops cheaper than the next hospital, or does it mean planning the services for the improvement of the general health and well-being of the population living in the area?

We’ve been through all this in Wales with the Local Health Boards (LHBs). Some, like the Rhondda Cynon Taf LHB did a brilliant job, providing innovations in preventative healthcare.

Others like the Cardiff LHB got into awful difficulties with contracting competitively for out-of-hours care.

The English dilemma is whether to create hundreds of mini-quangos to plan healthcare or outsourcing everything to independent contractors with no responsibility to Parliament for the spending of vast sums of taxpayers’ money?

Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/columnists/2011/04/16/lansley-s-health-reform-plans-raise-many-questions-91466-28530110/#ixzz1JfU2xU19