Bliar still thinks that his reforms will improve NHS

Tony Bliar has defended his "changes" in the NHS, and predicted that they will lead to better patient care. In a speech to the NHS Confederation, he called on managers and doctors to sell reforms to the public in England. "The best is yet to come with more lives saved, stopping more pain and distress". Critics of the reforms say downgrading traditional A&E units will put patient lives at risk and are being carried out to cut costs.

And the Guardian newspaper reports that ministers have accepted in private that they have failed to sell NHS reform effectively to the public as Health Direct reported in our blog yesterday.

Speaking to an audience of NHS managers and doctors, Mr Bliar said service improvements in NHS hospitals were being implemented to ensure the very sick have speedy access to specialist care but also to treat people more conveniently closer to home.

The Prime Minister said no change was not an option. The key was to shape change to ensure a vibrant future for the NHS. He conceded that there was "in-built resistance" to change, and that managers had a tough job selling it to the public.

But he said: "The best reason for all this change is the best reason there possibly can be: better care for the patient. I genuinely believe the best is yet to come with more lives saved, stopping more pain and distress."

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA's consultants' committee said decisions on reconfiguration must be based on "good evidence".

Case against

Professor Christopher Marks, cancer surgeon and chairman of the independent campaign to save the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford, said: "What local people want is access to excellent care which they can get to easily."

He accepted that some complicated cases must go to specialist centres, but warned centralisation of services in Surrey would see a doubling of minimum ambulance times, which could compromise care.

"Thanks to the money that the government has put in, particularly to A&E, the service has improved marvellously, and it is a pity to throw the baby out with the bath water when you have spent all this money."

Dr Richard Taylor, the independent MP for Wyre Forest, who campaigned against the closure of his local hospital in Kidderminster, admitted that campaigns to save local facilities were driven in some part by emotion.

But he warned that downgrading A&E units left them unable to cope.

"There has got to be compromise that keeps adequate facilities at a wider range of acute general hospitals than these super-specialist centres alone."

Taken from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6207278.stm

Health Direct warns that as long as saving money remains the Hewitt's number one priority then Bliar will continue to live in his cloud cuckoo land on improvesments to teh NHS:

On Jan 30, 2006 in Hewitt- Your money not your life- puts money before medicine Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, called for the end of the "handout culture" in the NHS and demanded that financial management be put ahead of clinical objectives. Under the new financial regime, health trusts will sink or swim on their ability to attract patients under a system of payment by results that threatens the income of poor performers.

The health secretary issued the "Business Arrangements" manual explaining how NHS finances should be controlled during 2006/7, when her reforms are due to create unprecedented instability in the service. She said: "Excellence in financial management is the prerequisite for high quality sustainable services."

Trusts will have to say goodbye to "a culture of balance sheet adjustments and handouts" that allowed hospitals to tolerate inefficiency on the assumption that the NHS would bail them out.

The rulebook made it clear that strong financial management has moved from the bottom of Ms Hewitt's list of priorities to the top.