Labour members get the lowdown on the NHS

Invited guest Terry Keefe Regional Officer of Unite talked about the future of the NHS to members of Mid Devon Labour branch at the Mitre, Crediton 13 December.

He begun by saying that the NHS as it exists should not be under valued. It is one of the most cost effective healthcare organisations in the world, but the government wants efficiency savings of £15-20bn, including reducing management costs by 45%.

However technological advances and people living longer will lead to unavoidable increases in costs. These will add 4%-5% in costs per year.   Therefore in real terms the NHS will be able to do less.

Terry Keefe explained that Strategic Health Authorities, which oversee and manage the NHS in the regions, would disappear by 2013 and groups of GPs will replace Primary Care Trusts. These groups would take charge of 80% of the NHS budget, commissioning mental health, hospital and community services from “any willing provider.” The NHS will keep all the larger properties, such as hospitals,

Doctors are split three ways in their reception of the proposals. If GPs are not prepared to run the commissioning there will be big problems. Clinicians, for example,  are not well quipped to construct business plans.

This means that GPs will inevitably commission out to private management or health companies The government wants as many NHS services as possible to be turned into social enterprises, but while these usually take 2 years to set up the government wants these in place in 4 months,

The Primary Care Trust in Devon will be replaced by three separate social enterprises, which means fragmented management across the county. Patients have not been consulted and staff expects to be re-employed under lesser terms and conditions. 96% of staff does not want to transfer to a social enterprise.

Terry Keefe pointed out the inadequate timescale for the changes. For example, the most successful social enterprises normally consist of 40-50 peoples but we are talking in the NHS of around 2500 people the only social enterprise that presently exists in the NHS is in Hull.

There has been no pattern to consultation. So much is changing at once, with so many different programmes and varied timescales. Terry Keefe forecast that next year would bring chaos

He added that changes will affect everything, for example NHS Direct will no longer be staffed by nurses but by advisors who will be given 6 weeks training.

He concluded that the changes would inevitably lead to more privatisation, probably an insurance base scheme, with the NHS becoming merely a brand.

This was followed by a lively discussion. which centred on the need for greater clarity about the proposals, public awareness  and how patients will be affected..