Five-year health plan protects NHS, says Burnham

10 Dec 09
The Pre-Budget Report ‘locks in’ the improvements that have been secured in the NHS over the past ten years, Health Secretary Andy Burnham has said

By Vivienne Russell

10 December 2009

The Pre-Budget Report ‘locks in’ the improvements that have been secured in the NHS over the past ten years, Health Secretary Andy Burnham has said.

Launching a new five-year strategy for the health service today, Burnham said service standards would be maintained. The PBR, published on December 9, included a pledge to protect 95% of NHS spending for the two years from 2011/12. Health economists have pointed out that this amounts to a real-terms cut, see the King’s Fund’s John Appleby blog, 'NHS will feel PBR pain',

‘In the past, a tougher financial environment has meant that patients have paid the price through longer waits. But that will not happen this time. We will not back away from the NHS,’ Burnham said.

Among the proposals included in the strategy are: the expansion of patient choice through the abolition of GP practice boundaries; dedicated carers for patients with cancer and serious long-term conditions; and linking of hospital income to patient satisfaction rates.

Commenting on the latter, NHS Confederation chief executive Steve Barnett said it was an attractive concept but difficult to put into practice.

‘Variations in people’s expectations of what kind of service they should receive can be considerable and factors like geographical location, age, gender and ethnicity can all impact on the kinds of responses received. Enormous care and detail would be needed to make this kind of assessment work,’ he said.

Burnham also reiterated his statement that the NHS would be the ‘preferred provider’ of services.

‘This is not about accepting underperformance or freezing out our partners in other parts of the NHS, the third sector and the independent sector. But we are asking the NHS and its staff to go through an unprecedented amount of change, so this is about saying that where there is underperformance and the NHS is an incumbent provider, we will give the NHS the first opportunity to improve to the level of the best.’

The strategy also contains a commitment to explore whether frontline staff can be offered a local or regional employment guarantee ‘in return for flexibility, mobility and sustained pay restraint’.

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