Aneurin Bevan's creation is about to be broken up and sold off
The Government’s plans to reform the health service can be seen as logical. GPs are close to the patients, know what they want and are best placed to be the ‘purchaser’ of health care.
Many GPs are committed to the NHS and are keen to get the best for their patients, however some are not. They are already running practices as private companies and are not really concerned about the NHS as a concept.
The purpose of these reforms is to shift the NHS to a federation of private providers. Some GPs will employ private companies to run their commissioning activities with the freedom to purchase services outside of the NHS maybe creating a market for new private sector providers to enter the British health market (I hate the idea of illness being a commodity). Over time the NHS will become weaker and these reforms will help to pay to expand private provision and marginalise public sector.
The NHS can not be privatised wholesale, it is far too large and loved however the condem reforms start by breaking up the service into small units far easier to be swallowed by the private sector.
What Nye Bevan said about the Tories shouldn’t be forgotten:
Having just come out of a 45 bed acute trauma ward staffed by a maximum of THREE staff nurses (ie. fully-trained, skilled, staff able and legally allowed to deliver the kind of complex, hi-tech healthcare now current), it’s quite apparent that there’s still a huge issue within the NHS around getting the necessary resources to where they should be.
I reckon a ward like that, if it is to consistently deliver the kind of high quality outcomes required (that not only save and extend lives but bring down costs because people aren’t being readmitted to hospital or picking up new conditions etc.), needs around 10-15 staff nurses on duty.
I’ve no idea whether the new Tory reforms are the rights ones or not. But the idea that the current top-down, centralised management structure is some kind of panacea is a myth.
It’s just about coping under extreme pressure. A means to better manage and target NHS resources is urgently required. The money’s in there in the system …