By Mark Smulian | 11 October 2011
Foundation hospitals have urged peers not to hold up the government’s health reforms when they begin to debate the Health and Social Care Bill today.
Former foreign secretary Lord Owen has tabled amendments to
refer parts of the Bill to a committee for further scrutiny. If these are accepted,
the Bill could fall due to lack of parliamentary time.Foundation Trust Network chief executive Sue Slipman says that as trusts are making efficiency savings equivalent to some 6% a year, ‘we need reform to manage the financial crisis in the NHS [and] to be able to act decisively, to innovate to improve services while also saving money’.
The government’s reforms will introduce greater competition into the NHS, as well as moving the power to commission services from primary care trusts to health professionals in clinical commissioning consortiums.
The plans have already been slowed andmodified following consultation, and health minister Paul Burstow said last month that further changes remained possible in the second chamber.
Slipman also called on peers to support the removal of the cap on trusts’ non-NHS work, which has been in place since their inception in 2004. She denied that this would change the nature of trusts from public sector to commercial organisations and welcomed ‘the safeguard that trusts should demonstrate that their non-NHS activity will benefit NHS patients’.
The network says that although the cap is often referred to as affecting only work with private patients, in practice it applies to trusts’ income of all kinds from non-NHS sources. Joint ventures, contracts with the voluntary sector and exploitation of intellectual property are also caught by the restriction, it said.
A survey by the network answered by 136 of the 139 trusts showed 109 reported private income of less than 1% of their total in 2010/11, of which 48 had no income from this source.
Only two trusts had private income in excess of 10% of their total – the Royal Marsden at 25.8% and Moorfields at 13%, with the remainder between 1% and 10%.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health says the public wants greater choice in health care.In a survey carried out for the DoH, more than 80% of patients said they wanted more choice over where they were treated in the NHS. Almost three-quarters wanted more choice of the doctors in charge of their care.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said that the survey was ‘clear evidence that patients want more choice and control over their healthcare’, which forms part of the government’s plans to increase competition in the NHS.
‘Patients no longer want to settle for second best – they want what’s best for them and their families and they don’t want to be restricted by geographical boundaries or bureaucratic rules,’ he said.
