The Labour Party are ridiculing the Con-Dems’ coalition governments’ proposed changes to the NHS as excessively complex and incomprehensible. Previous to the 2010 general election Cameron promised no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS and said “The recent history of the NHS reads like a wretched bowl of Alphabetti Spagetti and it has got to stop”.

These organograms(?) – credited to Labour policy wonks – show the current and proposed excessive spagetti-like top-down re-organisation of the NHS that Cameron said would not happen and “has got to stop”.

The Guardian reports  that

The Liberal Democrats will not debate a formal motion on the future of the NHS at their conference, but will hear from a balanced group of speakers including Baroness Williams on whether the reforms sought by the party at its spring conference have been achieved through the listening exercise.

Perhaps they should amend their name to the Liberals or Conservatives?

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Organograms show NHS becoming even more complex | Westminster blog | Jim Pickard and Kiran Stacey share their views on the UK’s political scene for the Financial Times – FT.com

David Cameron, pre-election, told National Health Service staff there would be no more “top-down reorganisations”. The recent history of the organisation had been “like a bowl of alphabetty spaghetti“, he pointed out.

The government is getting rid of primary care trusts. At the same time it is creating a National Commissioning Board, Clinical Senates, Public Health England, Healthwatch England, Health Education England, Citizens’ Panels, Local Education and Training Boards and Health and Wellbeing Boards and shadow Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Even now Cameron has insisted that he has been “taking out” bureaucracy out of the National Health Service. These two graphics would suggest a rather different situation.
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Labour ridicules David Cameron’s NHS structure | Politics | The Guardian

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Before the election, David Cameron promised NHS staff there would be no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS, describing its recent history as “like a bowl of alphabetti spaghetti”. His commitment was reiterated in the coalition agreement and was widely welcomed by health service staff. At the latest relaunch of his reorganisation plans, he claimed that he was “taking out a huge amount of bureaucracy” from the NHS.

Yet Cameron’s new NHS structure includes the creation of a National Commissioning Board, intended to be separate from ministers, at the apex of the reformed organisation. The chief executive designate of the board, Sir David Nicholson, has acknowledged that it “could become the greatest quango in the sky we have seen”.

Other new bodies to be created include clinical senates, Public Health England, Healthwatch England, Health Education England, citizens’ panels, local education and training boards, and health and wellbeing boards. Primary care trusts (PCTs) will be replaced by accredited and shadow clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). Labour said confusion remained about the transfer of responsibility from PCTs to CCGs, with senior officials at the Department of Health reportedly raising concerns about the danger of operating a two-tier commissioning system.

One senior commissioner was reported as saying “You can just about tolerate a two-tier provision system but we can’t operate two-tier commissioning” and another as saying “Either it doesn’t really work like this [as announced] or it will be a feverishly expensive bureaucracy”.
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We all need to get behind anti-Health Bill campaign » Hospital Dr

The NHS Consultants’ Association backs the BMA campaign to withdraw the Health and Social Care Bill.

Following the Executive Committee meeting of the NHSCA on the 4 August 2011, there was a unanimous decision to congratulate and support the BMA over its decision to mount a public campaign to call for withdrawal of the Health and Social Care Bill.

The NHSCA continues to believe that the Health and Social Care Bill represents the greatest threat to the NHS in its history. Despite the government’s proposed changes to the Bill following the Future Forum report, the key policy levers to deliver a full blooded market based system with increasing NHS privatisation remain intact. Worse still, the bill is now even more complicated and will be more costly to implement.

The Royal College of GPs has worked out that the number of NHS statutory bodies is going to increase from 163 bodies to 521! No wonder why Dr Hamish Meldrum, chair of BMA council stated that the Bill was: “Hopelessly complex and it really would be better if it were withdrawn.”

We are now left with a policy mess, at a time when the NHS is facing the greatest funding crisis in its history, with the QIPP efficiency drive aiming to deliver £20bn of savings by 2014. This will actually act as a catalyst to drive increasing privatisation of the NHS, as PCT clusters are forced to ration NHS care due to financial constraints, and NHS trusts come under huge financial pressure to cut costs.

We are already seeing an increase in NHS waiting lists and many PCTs reducing their lists of ‘NHS core services’, both of which result in increasing uptake of private health insurance policies.
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GP warning over ‘crazy’ rapid roll-out of NHS 111 | GPonline.com

Strategic health authorities have been given seven weeks to tell the DoH how and when they plan to roll-out NHS 111 hotlines across their area.

But one senior GP warned the deadline was ‘crazy’ given that the pilot NHS 111 schemes across the UK were either incomplete, or yet even to begin.
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Tories’ circular logic / Features / Home – Morning Star

The government is demanding that the National Health Service doesn’t use NHS hospitals.

Instead, the NHS must pay David Cameron’s dinner guests for their operations.

It sounds quite mad but it is, sadly, quite true. At the end of July a little-known government quango called the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel ruled that Wiltshire and Bath NHS were wrong not to give a company called Circle Health millions of pounds for operations.

The Tories love to talk about “social enterprises,” claiming they are a new type of firm that use market methods but are driven by ethical impulses.

Circle claims to be such a beast.

Last January future Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley spoke at the firm’s glamorous private hospital in Bath to praise its work.

Of course, the fact that behind all the waffle about “social enterprises” lurk some very profit-hungry Tory donors may well have encouraged Lansley to go to the shindig.

Circle is 49 per cent owned by its employees, which is why it calls itself a “social enterprise.”

But the firm is also 51 per cent owned by private investors, including around 40 per cent by hedge funds Odey Asset Management and Lansdowne Holdings.

Since 2003 Crispin Odey and Lansdowne’s Paul Ruddock and David Craigen have between them donated £561,000 to the Tories.

This money buys them membership of the Tories’ Leader’s Club and regular dinners with Cameron.
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‘Miracle’ MS Pill Won’t Get NHS Funding | LBC

Fingolimod is the first pill to treat MS, but now NICE, the health watchdog, has ruled it should not be funded by the NHS because it is not cost effective.

Amanda Cook from Norfolk has taken the tablet for the past three years.

She told Sky News: “This tablet has changed my life completely. I think it’s a very disappointing decision.

“It takes away another option for MS therapies and I think it’s the wrong decision.”

Research found that Fingolimod reduces the number of relapses for sufferers by more than a half, and cuts disability progression by 30 percent in some cases.
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The main NHS news is that the British Medical Association (BMA) is to “start a public campaign to call for the withdrawal of the health and social care bill”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/20/doctors-campaign-against-nhs-reforms  NB article recommended.

The BMA, which represents 140,000 doctors, voted to “reject the idea that the government’s proposed changes to the bill will significantly reduce the risk of further marketisation and privatisation of the NHS” and “agreed that the government is misleading the public by repeatedly stating that there will be ‘no privatisation of the NHS'”.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of council at the BMA, said: “Whilst the BMA recognises there have been some changes following the listening pause, there is widespread feeling that the proposed legislation is hopelessly complex, and it really would be better if the bill were withdrawn.”

His colleague on the council Dr Peedell said that the health bill was “just a privatisation bill with a third of it devoted to [producing] an economic regulated market”.

In the same article, campaigning group 38degrees received huge support to their campaign to save the NHS.

To underline that the government’s attempts to dissipate professional and public anger – such as the legislative pause – have had little effect, internet campaigners at 38 Degrees, which has 850,000 members in the UK, claimed to have raised cash at the rate of £56 a minute via an email marketing campaign on Wednesday.

The money will be used to get lawyers to comb through the 180 amendments produced by the government when it re-submitted the bill for its second reading earlier this month.

“38 Degrees members want to cut through the tangled web of amendments which make up Andrew Lansley’s re-written NHS plans. So we’re chipping in to hire legal experts to go through them with a fine tooth comb,” said the organisation’s executive director, David Babbs. “We’re concerned that real threats to our NHS may still lurk behind Lansley and [David] Cameron’s warm words. Are we on a slippery slope to the NHS being broken up by EU competition laws? Why does Lansley seem to be watering down his legal duty to provide a national health service?”

Health treatment restrictions for smokers and fat people. It should be noted that this is rationing of care as a result of cuts.

Cuts hitting the NHS in Wales.

Many articles report on yesterday’s news of Lansley extending privatisation through Any Qualified (Willing) Provider.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Doctors to launch public campaign against proposed NHS reforms | Society | The Guardian

The government faces a summer of discontent over its NHS reforms after doctors voted to launch a public campaign against the health bill, and one of the UK’s internet campaign groups raised £10,000 in three hours after emailing members to pay for expert legal advice over the bill.

The British Medical Association’s council, the executive committee of the union, voted to pass a series of motions critical of the government’s bill – and crucially accepted that doctors “start a public campaign to call for the withdrawal of the health and social care bill”.

Put forward by NHS consultants Clive Peedell and Jacky Davis, the motion will ratchet up the pressure on ministers over the summer break who had hoped that the bill’s third reading in early September would be an easy ride.

The BMA, which represents 140,000 doctors, voted to “reject the idea that the government’s proposed changes to the bill will significantly reduce the risk of further marketisation and privatisation of the NHS” and “agreed that the government is misleading the public by repeatedly stating that there will be ‘no privatisation of the NHS'”.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of council at the BMA, said: “Whilst the BMA recognises there have been some changes following the listening pause, there is widespread feeling that the proposed legislation is hopelessly complex, and it really would be better if the bill were withdrawn.”

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The Operating Theatre Journal : GPs agree ban on operations for smokers and obese patients

GPs have signed off a series of sweeping referral restrictions by NHS managers that will bar smokers and overweight patients from being referred for surgery, as PCTs across the country bring in new cost-saving restrictions.

Both LMCs and GP consortium leaders have backed moves by NHS Hertfordshire to block any patient with a BMI over 30 from being referred for routine joint replacement surgery without first being referred to a weight management scheme. GPs will also be prevented from referring smokers for any orthopaedic surgery until they have been referred for smoking cessation.

GPC leaders are seeking legal advice on the controversial plans and are warning that a number of trusts across England have suggested they may follow suit. Locally, the move has driven a wedge between GPs – with consortium leaders divided over the ethics of the restrictions and Hertfordshire LMC backing the plans by just one vote.

Meanwhile, a Pulse investigation covering 41 PCTs has found two-thirds have added new procedures to ‘low clinical priority’ lists since April, as trusts struggle to cut costs.

Procedures subject to new restrictions include the treatment of ganglions in Hampshire and DEXA scanning in primary prevention of osteoporotic fractures in men and women over 50 in Bristol. NHS Warrington has added 13 restrictions, including the treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea.

But it is the restrictions on treatment for smokers and obese patients that have prompted fiercest debate.
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Fears for patient care as Welsh NHS battles to make £455m saving – Health News – News – WalesOnline

Patient services could be threatened as health boards battle to save almost half a billion pounds this year.

The scale of the financial challenge facing the NHS comes after “unprecedented” savings of £435m made last year and a further £1bn made over the course of recent years.

Experts believe patient services will not escape the spending cuts this year and the Western Mail has learned Wales’ seven health boards have not yet identified how they can find almost a third of the £455.7m total saving needed.

Hywel Dda and Cardiff and Vale University health boards have yet to find £39m and £31.5m of savings respectively.

Professor Marcus Longley, director of the Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care, at the University of Glamorgan, said: “Clearly this cannot be done with no impact on patient care because there isn’t half a billion pounds in the system that’s not needed.
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More NHS care open to external providers – Public Service
NHS community and mental health services opened up to competition » Hospital Dr
Unions Criticize Government Plans for Patient Choice, Amid Fears of Privatization