Crystal ball gazing
More crystal balls in evidence at the Independent with its own version of Gordon Brown’s plans:
THE NHS
Said by allies to be his “number one priority”. Labour has lost its lead over the Tories on the health service, despite spending billions on reform. Mr Brown is said to be “appalled” at nurses being sacked and plans to call a halt to the expansion of private health care in services by hospital trusts. That will be hailed as a victory by unions who have been mounting a vigorous campaign against the Government over the “privatisation” of the health service which could prove highly damaging in the approach to the next general election.
But it will alarm some who fear he is turning the clock back. This is denied by Mr Brown’s allies who believe that the NHS hospital trusts wasted taxpayers’ money by paying the private health sector to do its work, including expensive agency nurses while home-produced nurses were denied jobs.
Mr Brown is not halting other NHS reforms. Tomorrow Andy Burnham, the Minister of State for Health, is expected to call for private companies to be offered the chance to run family doctor services in 30 “under-doctored” areas. That may seem to contradict Mr Brown’s approach, but his defenders say GPs are already private contractors and bringing in companies to run services will “put a rocket up them”.
Well, we have a few weeks to wait.
A question proposed for the GMC consultation about consent out later this month:
“Does withholding of information about treatments that might be in a patient’s best interest but are available only either in the private sector or abroad constitute a contravening of GMC guidance?”
It will be interesting to see what the consensus is on that one.
More on Romania from the Independent with it being used to show the pitfalls of rationing.
If the British Medical Association is serious about rationing treatments on the NHS, it might care to examine what is happening in Romania.
In a report to be published this morning, the BMA will launch its plan for the future of the NHS in England. It will say that despite the billions of pounds poured into the health service over the past six years, there is still not enough cash to pay for everything. We must, therefore, kiss goodbye to the idea of a universal service available, free to all on the basis of need, and accept that some of what the NHS does it must cease doing.
This is a conclusion the Romanian government reached last year when it took radical action to curb health spending. In September, it eliminated medical oncology as a separate specialty, slashing at a stroke one of the high-cost areas of medicine, on the grounds that cancer patients are not economically productive. In future, oncology services will be provided as part of the broader specialty of internal medicine, reducing expertise and limiting access to treatment. Yesterday, the decision brought some of the country’s 370,000 cancer sufferers on to the streets of Bucharest in protest.
The BMA’s thinking seems to be that cuts hurt, but they hurt less if they are self-inflicted.
I have to agree with the thrust of the analysis. The savings to be made as minimal & just what is the BMA doing anyway? Rationing is a consequence of available funds against public priorities & while the BMA can & should call for an open debate about rationing, it should not be setting itself up as an interested party calling for rationing to be introduced.
Isoft moves closer to being sold with IBA Health seeking to raise funds.
The Australian stock exchange agreed to a four-day suspension to allow IBA Health to seek extra capital from institutional shareholders. ISoft said it had joined talks between shareholders and IBA as both companies sought an agreed deal.
IBA Health is asking for a debt facility of £82m to fund the proposed all-share offer for iSoft. It has also reached agreement with investment bank ABN Amro for new debt facilities of £130m for the combined group. It is understood further debt-raising was necessary to refinance iSoft’s crippling borrowing commitments.
Now that the future looks more secure, I hope that Lorenzo is delivered according to requirements.
While the Telegraph highlights Computer Weekly’s report on “major incidents” in the NPfIT.
Hospitals have been hit by 200 “major incidents” in four months because of breakdowns in the NHS’s £12 billion computer system, a report claims today.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am
[...] have the effect of doubling bills which already run into many thousands. I looked at this last week here and [...]