The government’s controversial health reforms are ‘frustrating’ the NHS’s efforts to meet its £20bn savings target by 2015, MPs said today.
A report by the health select committee highlighted the ‘key pressures’ facing the NHS, including development
of expensive new technologies and growing demand for treatment at a time of
frozen health and social care budgets. They said efficiency savings were needed to meet these extra costs and were more important than the planned changes in the Health and Social Care Bill. Proposals such as replacing primary care trusts with GP-led clinical commissioning groups were ‘complicating’ the push for efficiency gains, the MPs found.
Although the NHS was ‘well used’ to changes in management structures, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s proposals were creating ‘disruption and distraction’ across the health service. This was hindering ‘the ability of organisations to consider truly effective ways of reforming service delivery and releasing savings’, the report found.
Public expenditurealso found ‘disturbing evidence’ of a need for short-term savings leading to cuts in services.
Committee chair and former health secretary Stephen Dorrell said that ‘the NHS funding challenge can only be met by rethinking and redesigning the way health services are delivered’.
He added: ‘Both the NHS and local authorities are struggling to meet current targets in a sustainable, long-term manner that will maintain high-quality, efficient care in the future.’
Similar concerns were raised last week in a joint report from the Audit Commission and Monitor, which urged hospitals not to prioritise cost-cutting over service improvements in their efficiency plans.
Responding to the report, Lansley said reform was ‘essential if we are to put the NHS on a sustainable footing for the future’.
He added: ‘Only when we give nurses and doctors more power will we see local NHS services reshaped to suit patients so they can see who they want where they want. We know the NHS can meet this challenge – we have already made £7bn in efficiency savings over the last 18 months as performance has improved.’
But trade unions called for the government to drop the reform plans in light of the report. Unison said that the report showed ‘the disruption, distraction and upheaval in the Bill could hit standards of care in the NHS’, while Unite said that the report should be ‘the final nail in the coffin’ of the changes.
The NHS Confederation, which represents organisations across the NHS, called for the Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, to be backed to end the uncertainty around a ‘once in a generation’ financial challenge.
