This report uses the concept of avoidable mortality to analyse the NHS' performance on the biggest 'killers', cancer and circulatory disease, focusing on the years 1999-2005.
It finds that real improvements have been made, and that performance has compared quite favourably with other European countries of comparable development, but there are two particular causes for concern: a) the rate of improvement in avoidable cancer mortality has fallen since 1999, at odds with trends since 1979; b) avoidable mortality from circulatory disease remains very high.
After decades of under investment in the UK's health system, the
NHS Plan (July 2000), acknowledged that the NHS had been 'left with insufficient capacity to provide the services the public expect', and pledged sustained amounts of extra cash for the NHS. This series of online briefings look at various measures of NHS performance and seek to analyse exactly how effective this money, and the reforms that have accompanied it, have been in driving up standards.
Commentating on the recommendation of the interim report of
Our NHS, Our Future: NHS Next Stage Review, that a Health Innovation Council be set up with a budget of with a budget of £100m 'to help the NHS develop and deploy hi-tech health care such as medical devices and diagnostics', the Civitas report argues that innovation in the NHS will continue to be slow until the NHS embraces competition and patient choice.
The culmination of Professor Sir Ara Darzi's intensive review of health care in London,
'Healthcare for London: A Framework for Action' proposes a radical shake-up of the configuration of NHS services in London. While the report serves as a useful incite for commissioners as to the direction they might wish to go in (and in the case of secondary care probably should go in), it should serve as exactly that, a useful incite, and not be used as a blueprint for the imposition of a new healthcare system for London from above.
There are certain aspects to applaud, but they are pretty much restricted to the supply-side and moves to free hospitals from government interference. Elsewhere, the Conservatives should be considering more radical alternatives - most poignantly a change to the way the NHS is funded. The NHS board is not the panacea for the NHS' woes that it is presented as and, in fact, seriously muddies the waters when it comes to commissioning in response to patient need.
The Health Policy Consensus Group came together in 2003 to explore whether or not people drawn from across the political spectrum could agree about the best way to reform the NHS. Comprising senior NHS consultants as well as prominent Labour party members, it set out to preserve the access for rich and poor alike that we all support, whilst increasing consumer choice and personal responsibility for health care expenditure:
The Health Policy Consensus Group group members were: Professor Nick Bosanquet, Anthony Browne, Dr. Adrian Bull, Geraint Day, Lord Meghnad Desai, Helen Disney, Dr. David G. Green, Ben Irvine, Ruth Lea, Dr. Christoph Lees, Andrew Neil, Paul Ormerod, Stephen Pollard, Professor Stephen Smith and Matthew Young.
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