NHS turned upside down!
In a major reorganisation of the NHS announced yesterday by the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, GPs are to be given a hugely increased role in commissioning. Commissioning healthcare is about deciding what services the NHS will pay for e.g. hospital services, mental health services, community services.
In these far reaching proposals two layers of bureaucracy will axed – Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts. Their commissioning responsibilities will be handed to GP consortia that typically might look after 100,000ish patients. We have of course been here before, firstly with fundholding, that New Labour ended in 1997, but was more limited – did not cover the range of services that these new proposals will and was only taken up by about 50% of GPs – whereas this initiative will apply to all GPs in England.
The initiative that it has been built on is Practice Based Commissioning. This has been in existence for about seven years. Kings Medical Practice is in a consortia of local GPs from Normanton, Castleford and Pontefract. But the consortia have achieved very little, mainly because it has been excessively bureaucratic and any initiatives that have been proposed have been blocked or delayed by our local Primary Care Trust. It really has had little impact and I cannot think of any new service or pathway that has come about as a result of Practice Based Commissioning.
However, we are enthusiastic about having proper power and control over commissioning. We have lots of ideas about how we can make local services more efficient and get the double win of better services that are cheaper
Bring on the revolution!
In these far reaching proposals two layers of bureaucracy will axed – Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts. Their commissioning responsibilities will be handed to GP consortia that typically might look after 100,000ish patients. We have of course been here before, firstly with fundholding, that New Labour ended in 1997, but was more limited – did not cover the range of services that these new proposals will and was only taken up by about 50% of GPs – whereas this initiative will apply to all GPs in England.
The initiative that it has been built on is Practice Based Commissioning. This has been in existence for about seven years. Kings Medical Practice is in a consortia of local GPs from Normanton, Castleford and Pontefract. But the consortia have achieved very little, mainly because it has been excessively bureaucratic and any initiatives that have been proposed have been blocked or delayed by our local Primary Care Trust. It really has had little impact and I cannot think of any new service or pathway that has come about as a result of Practice Based Commissioning.
However, we are enthusiastic about having proper power and control over commissioning. We have lots of ideas about how we can make local services more efficient and get the double win of better services that are cheaper
Bring on the revolution!
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