NEWS
Strike over pensions proposals
Hundreds of thousands of NHS staff were due to join the Novem- ber 30 public sector strike as NHE was going to press.
Healthcare managers were set to join nurses, paramedics, radiog- raphers, midwives, physiothera- pists, some doctors, porters, chi- ropodists and podiatrists on the pensions strike.
The BMA itself was not striking, but urging doctors to “show their support”, and asked off-duty doc- tors to join strike rallies and do- nate to strike funds.
While most media attention fo- cused on the strike’s likely impact on schools and border controls, Unison, the country’s biggest health union, said NHS services would be restricted to ‘Christmas Day’ type services.
The NHS Commissioning Board is now established in shadow form.
It will function initially as a special health authority, and is due to take on full statutory responsibilities from April 2013, subject to legisla- tion. It will take on the day-to-day running of the NHS, with a staff of around 3,500 and overall respon- sibility for NHS care worth £80bn.
It will support, develop and hold to account the national system of clinical commissioning groups, and be responsible for directly commissioning some services, notably primary care and special- ised services for rarer conditions.
NHS Confederation chief execu- tive Mike Farrar said: “We strongly welcome the creation of the NHS Commissioning Board.
“We want and need it to be suc-
cessful. If it isn’t, the whole NHS is going to have a very big problem, especially with the current finan- cial pressures building daily.”
But it faced potential “bear-traps”, he added – being seen as unac- countable,
incurring
Commissioners need “guidance, not mandatory rules”, he said, adding: “If power remains cen- tralised with the Board, enthusi- asm for commissioning among local clinicians and managers will wane.”
resentment
in the NHS by being overbearing, and failing to deliver for patients.
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The NHS in England has been ac- cused of inefficiency over its use of expensive equipment, after an enquiry by the Commons Public Accounts Committee found that about two in every five emergen- cy patients who have suffered a stroke have to wait over 24 hours before receiving a scan.
The committee of MPs has pub- lished a report calling for the NHS to re-examine its use of high-val- ue equipment. The NHS spends about £50m annually on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan- ners, Computed Tomography (CT) scanners and Linear Accelerator (Linac) machines for cancer treat- ment, and now owns about £1bn worth of such technology.
Committee chair Margaret Hodge said: “We were shocked by the unacceptable response times for certain conditions. A modern NHS should not allow 50% of people who have a stroke to wait more than 24 hours for a scan. There are unacceptable variations be- tween trusts in the number of scans per machine, from 7,800 to almost 22,000 a year.
Reprieve for Brompton from High Court judge
Children’s heart surgery at Lon- don’s Royal Brompton has won a High Court reprieve, after a ruling declaring that the planned closure of the unit as part of a wider reor- ganisation was unlawful.
“Money is being wasted because trusts don’t join together to buy equipment and get the best deals by exploiting their bulk buying power.”
The Department of Health cited a more recent study that found that 70% of stroke sufferers were scanned
within 24 hours, would look into the report.
Health minister Simon Burns re- sponded: “Equipment like CT and MRI scanners play a critical role in diagnosis and treatment and we are investing £150m to expand
but
radiotherapy capacity and over £450m to achieve early diagnosis of cancer.
“We are already developing a strategy that will enable the NHS to save £1.2bn by ensuring that trusts take their accountability se- riously and encouraging them to collaborate with each other more effectively.”
Half of these machines will also need replacing over the next three years, costing £460m, and patient demand continues to increase.
Sir Ian Kennedy’s evaluation of the three hospitals offering chil- dren’s heart surgery decided that the Brompton unit should close, rather than that of Great Ormond Street or the Evelina, following years of investigation by a com- mittee of PCTs supported by many healthcare professionals.
Mr Justice Owen ruled that the consultation
recommending the
Brompton closure went “radically wrong” and was unlawful because it had been unfair to the hospital trust. He said if it had been al- lowed to submit evidence about its research late in the process, once it
realised how important
this could be to the final decision, its ‘score’ relative to the other two hospitals could have been higher, boosting public support for keep- ing all three units open.
national health executive Sep/Oct 11 | 5
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