Posts Tagged pcts
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.
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.
Lansley’s plans could set the NHS back by up to 3 years
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 10/07/2010
Moves to transfer commissioning responsibility to GPs could cost the NHS its £20 billion efficiency savings target, and worse
The coalition government’s White Paper on the NHS is due to be published next week. It is widely expected to outline plans to hand control of as much as £80 billion of resources in the NHS from Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to consortia of GPs.
Analysis released today by Civitas suggests such moves are likely to:
- Lead to at least a one year dip in performance in the NHS in absolute terms.
- Set the NHS back at least three years relative to what could be achieved without any structural change.
Read the full report and press release, here and here. For ideas for what the government should be doing, return to the blog tomorrow. Also, have a listen to R4 World Tonight (10 mins 55 secs in).
Failing to Figure
Posted by James Gubb in Economics, Health on 18/06/2009
On the Daily Telegraph’s blog, Richard Preston writes about Civitas’ latest publication, Failing to Figure by Mervyn Stone, emeritus professor of statistics at UCL. Half-way through, Preston makes the wry observation:
‘His biggest case study is the immensely complicated, deceitful and deluded means by which the formula was arrived at that determines how much of the NHS budget goes to each of the 152 primary care trusts in England. It’s almost proof of his case that you need to be a professional statistician to follow his argument: the chances of politicians understanding the formula, and therefore assessing whether it was fair, were virtually nil.’
True, it’s complicated. But here’s something of an idiots’ guide (something also that Nigel Hawkes has written about in a typically eloquent way in the British Medical Journal):
Read the rest of this entry »
Re-dis-organisation?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 20/09/2007
The Lib Dems have today proposed scrapping PCTs and SHAs and replacing them with elected local health boards, that would also be allowed to raise extra money for local services through a local income tax. The NHS must be shuddering at the prospect of yet more organisation. On the plus side, it would undoubtedly be a step towards solving the well-documented accountability issues currently besetting PCTs: dissatisfied patients would at least be able to kick out commissioners who aren’t providing a decent local service. But it is unlikely to be a satisfactory response to the NHS’ woes.