Yesterday was a rare good day for Andrew Lansley: the Health Bill survived its trial in
the House of Lords. But there are no fanfares in this morning’s press for the near-moribund health secretary. The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Mail all lead with the story
that 50 per cent of English hospitals fail elderly patients according to the Quality Care Commission. Lansley may have thought that
his struggle was with nit-picking peers, who are determined that he, as the secretary state, remains ultimately accountable for the NHS in the letter of the law. But, maintaining the standard of
NHS care is his real battle.
The irony of the recent squabble between the government and the Owenites is that today’s headlines suggest it was needless. Who is the public most likely to blame for a general picture of rising waiting lists, crowded wards and uncompassionate nursing? Why, the secretary of state of course. Lansley will have to fight to ensure that such a picture does not emerge and his controversial reforms will be central to that effort; at least, that is what he implied on the Today programme this morning when he said that the reforms will give “patients an active voice” to drive up standards.
This morning’s Telegraph leader column argues that the story on its front page is proof of the need for NHS reform, and it is hard to disagree. The NHS has to find both a way of managing ever-rising costs and the means to arrest years of falling productivity. The question is whether Lansley’s reforms address those aims. It’s no secret that vast swathes of the medical professional are sceptical. Conduct an experiment when you next visit a GP: ask him if he agrees with Lansley. My GP gave an interesting answer, albeit one suffused with so much irony he became slightly glib. Yes, he said, because the last thing we want is an accountable NHS run by patients. The Times’ Camilla Cavendish explains (£) what I think he meant:
‘[The NHS BILL] was never going to make much difference to patients. It does nothing to turn the NHS into a 24/7 operation, rather than one where you dread falling ill out of hours. It will not close failing hospitals. It doesn’t address the shocking standards of nursing care in some hospitals. Worse, it is an exasperating distraction from the explosion in chronic diseases and old age that could bankrupt the NHS while people argue about the difference between “promoting” and “providing” a service. …There is nothing transformational in the Bill that requires primary legislation. Competition and GP commissioning were not invented by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary; they began under Labour.’
In other words, the bill is a bureaucratic consolidation, a top-down reorganisation costing more than £1.7 billion that the NHS can ill-afford to waste at present.
UPDATE: For those who want further reading, the Taxpayers’ Alliance has released a report into the UK mortality rates in comparison with other European countries. Its key findings are that substantial investment in the health service appears not to have had a discernable impact on the rate of improving mortality, and that improvements which have been made appear to be slowing in an increasingly constrained . These figures suggest that low productivity remains a key challenge for the NHS.
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