Critics have slammed the government's recently announced healthcare reforms, saying they threaten stability and are likely to plunge the NHS into chaos.
The white paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS contains far reaching proposals that will see GPs given responsibility for commissioning NHS services through the creation of 500 GP consortia across England.
But some unions have raised fears over the pace of change, saying that such huge structural reorganisation will place extra pressure on staff, as well as being ruinous for the NHS's goal of making £20bn efficiency savings by 2014.
SoR chief executive Richard Evans described the proposals as "risky", commenting: “GP fundholding was not a resounding success in the past and we have serious doubts about the restructuring of the commissioning process in the current constrained situation."
And, he said, whilst clinical professionals – including radiographers and other AHPs – are in an ideal position to understand the needs of patients, "it is not necessarily the case that all GPs will be ideal managers of the enormous budgets that are involved in commissioning health services.
"The pressures on GPs to ration the care they purchase are likely to conflict with their primary role as front-line professionals.”
Hard times ahead
Analysis by independent think tank Civitas suggests the plans are likely to lead to at least a one year dip in performance in the NHS in absolute terms. The think tank also claims the reorganisation could set the NHS back at least three years relative to what could be achieved without any structural change.
Director of the health unit at Civitas, James Gubb, said: “The NHS is facing the most difficult financial times in its history. Now is not the time for ripping up internal structures yet again on scant evidence base, but for focusing minds on the task ahead and really getting behind the difficult decisions PCTs, as commissioners, will have to make.”
A full SoR comment on the white paper will appear on the website, and in the next issue of TopTalk.
