NHS and Labour : Delivery Not Dogma

The eminent surgeon and Labour peer Lord Darzi was right to say last night that obsessing over ‘creeping privatization’ of the NHS by Labour was a mistake. What matters to patients is the delivery of services and as long as they are free, it is irrelevant whether they are provided by the state or private providers. What matters is the quality of the service and its timely availability.

Labour’s trump card in the election game is the NHS, but as bridge players know, trumps are limited in number and have to be played with skill to win. Other players at the table have trumps of their own. The issue is not private providers. The issue is a service divided into compartments which do not talk to each other, hierarchical structures which create artificial barriers causing delay and a failure to integrate care and services into seamless delivery at point of need.

To this can be added two more must do changes about which we never hear because the medical professions are too powerful and the politicians too chicken. NHS doctors should not be allowed to moonlight in private practice while building up waiting lists in their hospital clinics to provide willing customers, and hospitals should be open fully for all services 24/7 and 365 days a year. It would take a big change in working practices and three eight hour shifts, but it is doable and should be done. Then we could kiss goodbye to waiting lists and targets and the huge bureaucratic industry they have spawned.

Comments are closed.