02 September 2005
The Department of Health has written an urgent letter to strategic health authorities urging them to stop drawing up commissioning plans for when primary care trusts end their provider role in 2008.
'It is unhelpful for SHAs to be rushing headlong into the design of new delivery units at this time,' the DoH warned SHA chief executives. 'We expect discussions on provider functions to follow the restructuring discussion, be led by the new PCTs and to take into account any conclusions from the upcoming white paper,' it added.
The letter follows the decision of many SHAs to include in their October reports on PCT reconfiguration plans as to where future PCTs will commission their services from.
Dr Mike Dixon, chair of the NHS Alliance, which represents PCTs, said that the SHAs' behaviour risked squeezing innovative professionals out. 'The great danger is that we don't even know about an awful lot of the potential providers,' he said.
'It seems to me that it would be far more sensible to have local primary care services planned and run by the frontline professionals rather than some fly-by-night private enterprise or the foundation trusts.'
Dixon is concerned that opportunities are being closed off for alternative providers. 'At this stage,' he said, 'even to have outline plans is to start closing down options, and to demoralise the workforce.
'They just feel they're pawns in someone else's game, whereas the government has said it wants a patient-led NHS and frontline professionals engaged and leading it.'
Dixon said the SHAs' behaviour had to be viewed in the context of an NHS culture of top-down management and SHA fears over their own future.
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