Downing Street Says » NHS reform

» Wednesday, December 15, 2010

NHS reform

Asked about the changes to the NHS being announced today and the fact that they were not included in any manifestos, the PMS said that they were not in a manifesto because we had a Coalition Government. The changes were aimed at ensuring the NHS worked for patients.

The PMS said that we were in a situation where we would not be able to throw money at the NHS in the coming years. When looking at international figures, the UK did fall behind on certain key measures, such as survival rates for cancer. So we needed to think about how we could improve on that.

The Government’s first priority was to ensure that patients were at the heart of the NHS and the second priority was that the clinicians were at the heart of making decisions. Put that GPs were not clinicians, so why were they being put in charge of decision-making, the PMS replied that we would have a Commissioning Board, run by clinicians. The PMS added that GPs were incredibly well-placed to make judgements about what was in the interests of their patients.

Asked why it made sense to take money out of the Health Service to spend on reform, the PMS replied that there would be some upfront costs to these reforms, but the objective was to drive efficiency through the NHS and reduce the levels of bureaucracy, which would reduce costs in the coming years.

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