英国国家医疗服务体系年度会议

Today marks 12 weeks since the Health and Social Care Act in England came fully into force.

We are still a long way from seeing the full impact of this unwanted legislation that does nothing to address the very real problems of quality, safety and financial constraints that we all know exist.

The government inflicted such unnecessary pain on the NHS that you can’t help wondering if it is one of the few public servants that the government wants to see pensioned off at 65.

By the government’s own reckoning, the NHS reforms have cost ￡1.6 billion; other estimates are considerably higher. And an immeasurable number of staff hours have been squandered. To achieve what?

Increased competition; even the government seems to have been playing it down recently. Integration seems to be the new mantra. Laudable, but how deep does that really go?

Taking the politics out of the day-to-day running of the health service; I think not. We only have to look at the government’s – and the opposition’s – recent response to the pressures on emergency medicine departments to see how well that’s gone!

Putting clinicians in the driving seat; we put this to the test: we asked doctors how many of them feel more empowered compared to a year ago. Do you know how many? Four per cent.