Posts Tagged NHS
Sending the Right Smoke Signals
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Health, Politics on 11/11/2011
By Emily Clarke
In 2001 Portugal abolished all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, from cannabis to heroin, in an attempt to reduce the number of drug related deaths and the spread of HIV/AIDS. After several years there was tentative discussion about the success of Portugal’s scheme (see for example the Economist’s article of August 2009) and although I don’t intend to add to the debate about the decriminalisation of drug use here, I do hope to discuss one particular element of Portugal’s policy that I find laudable.
Life’s Too Short to Understand the PCT Funding Formula
Posted by Nigel Williams in Health, Politics on 02/08/2011
Following the announcement of new funding formulae for NHS primary care trusts, accusations have begun about political bias. Manchester, says a report by Public Health Manchester, would lose £42m. Tower Hamlets would lose £19m, whereas Surrey and Hampshire would gain £113m between them.
In any such reallocation, beneficiaries are likely to conclude that the new version is fairer, whereas anyone losing out will prefer the old version. The Yorkshire Evening Post quotes Maureen Idle of Leeds Hospital Alert as saying “If the money has been given in the first place then there’s clearly an acknowledgement that it’s needed.” Read the rest of this entry »
Moving the chairs… again
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 19/01/2011
Over the past few weeks Civitas staff have written many articles questioning the Government’s plans for the NHS, not on invigorating competition – which is needed, particularly with the productivity challenges the NHS faces – but on commissioning: on abolishing all PCTs, the current commissioning bodies in the NHS, by 2013, replacing them with ‘consortia’ of GPs.
Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 22/12/2010
Trawling through the 167 pages of the Coalition Government’s response to the consultation on the NHS White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’, one cannot help but agree with Phil Collins’ recent comment piece in The Times… just why is the Secretary of State making NHS reform so hard for himself?
A better direction for NHS commissioning?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 29/10/2010
Yesterday, Civitas, in conjunction with the Manchester Business School, published this report, looking at the relationship between the size and performance of commissioners in the NHS. It found none, although both the domestic and international trend is towards larger commissioners, covering larger populations: the direct opposite to what is likely to happen under the Coalition Government’s White Paper on the NHS with the proposed move from PCTs to GP consortia. The evidence, in other words, doesn’t provide much in the way of support for the reforms to commissioning: reforms that are likely to be costly with uncertain outcomes.
Mergers offer no guarantee of ‘savings’ for NHS
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 23/09/2010
The HSJ revealed yesterday that eight London Primary Care Trusts, under guidance from NHS London and the Department of Health, are to effectively merge to ‘save £48m’. This comes after Sir David Nicholson, NHS Chief Executive, last week wrote to NHS managers effectively encouraging Strategic Health Authorities, such as NHS London, to ‘direct’ PCTs to share management functions and merge in all but name.
Such a move is understandable in light of the Coalition Government’s plans to disband PCTs from 2013 and hand over commissioning powers to new consortia of GPs, but is likely to add to the chaos of reorganisation rather than diminish it. It may be effective in London, where PCTs have for sometime collaborated in the commissioning of secondary care, but elsewhere,where they have not, past evidence suggests big problems: reduced financial control and lower quality care.