Healthcare reforms – It’s all about scratching an ideological itch

By Dave Roberts

The current Conservative healthcare plans are an example of ideological policy making masquerading as a management issue. To pretend that the reforms are in some way being forced upon the country by problems within the NHS is untrue and misleading. In fact, patient satisfaction in the NHS is the highest it has ever been, and much of that satisfaction is with local hospital care, not just GPs.

While the NHS is doubtless facing challenges with regard to technological advances and an ageing population there is no evidence that the proposed plans will do anything to assist the service meet those challenges.

David Cameron and Andrew Lansley have made a clear and deliberate decision to try and turn the NHS on its head. These reforms are a choice and if they fail to deliver dramatically improved health outcomes they will turn out to be a disastrous one.

And let us not pretend that the plans are in any way incremental or evolutionary. This is a radical and far reaching set of proposals. And the Conservative team know they are dangerous, which is the reason that there was no mention of the plans before the election or in the coalition agreement. Andrew Lansley has spent seven years thinking up these reforms and to argue that they were conjured up some time in June last year stretches belief.

The Tories didn’t want a pre-election debate on the future of the NHS, a debate that would raise memories of the shambles Labour inherited in 1997. They didn’t want people remembering the huge waiting lists for operations such as hip replacements, the tragic lack of resources in cancer care or the debacle that was local priority setting – or as it was more commonly known the “postcode lottery” of care.

The NHS is not perfect – there is room for improvement and there is room for a plurality of providers. But at a time when all public services are under financial pressure it is nothing but irresponsible to force the NHS to re-organise at huge cost just to scratch an ideological itch.

Dave Roberts is a former NHS Manager