NHS Reform - Pause for Breath - 3rd April 2011

This week the Government announced the Cancer Drugs Fund to make available life prolonging drugs -not ordinarily available- for cancer patients. In fact an interim £50 million fund has been operating since last October and which has already helped over 2000  patients across England. Now the new fund of £600 million over the next three years will continue to meet this previously unmet need for new drugs to improve the lives of many more cancer sufferers, giving them precious extra time with their loved ones.

In addition, the Government has announced an increase in NHS expenditure of £2.6 billion for the next financial year. This includes 4,200 extra health visitors, support for carer’s breaks, and new mental health therapies. The Hampshire Primary care trust is getting a £53 million increase in its budget. So, whilst almost every other aspect of our national life is facing cuts, the NHS, one of our most cherished and popular institutions, continues to enjoy increased expenditure. 

However, as medicine advances and we live longer, the costs of providing healthcare will grow even faster. If we are to be able to afford keep up with the latest therapies and cures we will need to become more efficient at getting financial resources to the front line where they can make a difference.

So we will have to reduce the drain of management costs and bureaucratic dead weight, and this is the purpose of the health bill currently before Parliament which -as I reported in this column in February- seeks to remove two entire tiers of management and put much more decision making power in the hands of family doctors on behalf of their patients.

 I have no doubt that this is the right direction of travel to secure the future of our NHS, and the sooner we make these reforms, the  sooner the savings can be redirected to more operations and new treatments. The Government is entirely right however, to draw breath  in order to persuade the medical profession -on whom we rely to run the NHS- that the changes are both necessary and highly desirable.

If these reforms are to be successful in achieving their objectives they should be supported by the professions that will implement them and operate within them. The NHS serves the whole nation so changes to it should enjoy as broad support as possible –and particularly from the medical professionals.

I have had some thoughtful emails from clinicians and ordinary members of the public about the proposed NHS reforms. Last weekend, however, I received a very large number of identical automatically generated emails. I am not sure these add much to the sum of public debate. The websites that provide them are rarely objective and are often funded by vested interests.

I find it difficult to judge exactly how strongly a constituent feels about an issue if their communication has been written by an organisation which despatches it to me at the click of a mouse button. When constituents took the trouble to write their own letters and had to put a stamp on them, you could be certain that they felt strongly on the subject. Now I am not so sure.