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NHS Reforms One Year On: Patients and Staff Deal With 'Cuts and Chaos' -- The Guardian, London

Denis Campbell and Randeep Ramesh report on the state of the UK's National Health Service reforms. "The fact that growing numbers of patients have been waiting longer than they should -- for treatment, in...[Accident and Emergency] or for a diagnostic test -- during the [government] coalition's time in power is one of the many issues facing Andrew Lansley, the [UK] health secretary. At the last count almost 250,000 patients in England had been waiting more than 18 weeks, including 100,000 who had to wait at least a year and 20,000 who had been waiting for more than a year...But waiting times are only one part of the coalition's gathering troubles over the NHS [UK's National Health Service]. With the health and social care bill marooned in parliament for 12 months...there are signs of...a health service too busy reorganising itself...to focus on patient care...Lansley's health service is a radical departure from the idea of a state-run, publicly-financed medical care system. Instead the coalition's health service will allow hospitals to get 50% of their income from private patients. It will allow patients a choice of provider, permitting private firms to offer services to NHS patients. Ministers have refused to release their own assessment of the risks to the health service from the reforms, despite an order...to do so...The British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and Academy of Medical Royal Colleges...have written to Lansley urging immediate publication of the risk register to enable proper discussion of the bill before it receives parliamentary approval. Even with the bill stuck in parliament, the NHS is being changed on the ground...with more than 253 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) [already] formed to purchase care on behalf of patients...This signals a shift in patient-doctor relationships...Critics who fear the bill is paving the way for the privatisation of the NHS point to the fact that, from April, eight areas of community and mental health services will be opened up to competiti...

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Source: Harvard World Health News - Monday, 23 January


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