16649 Commissioning Newspaper-A4_Layout 1 04/08/2015 15:46 Page 18
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CAN THE TORIES DELIVER THEIR
ELECTION PLEDGES?
The UK now has a new
Conservative government but
can minsters deliver everything
they promised before the
election, a panel of key
opinion leaders was asked at
Health+Care 2015.
“The answer to the question is
- no the policies don't stack up
and central to that is the
money. It is complete crunch
time both for the NHS and
social care,” declared Norman
Lamb, former care minister
T
he solution was to force the pace
of pooling budgets and single
commissioning in health and
care in every locality by 2018 and to
set up a non-partisan commission to
achieve a new settlement for the NHS
and social care. “Unless we get on
and do it now in the run-up to the
spending review then we face the
system crashing.”
Lord Philip Hunt, former health
minister in the Blair Government and
a Labour peer, said there were
workforce shortages not just in
primary care but also in many other
parts of the health service as well.
New migration rules would make this
worse as it would force overseas
nurses earning less than £35,000 to
return home. He questioned whether
integrated care could be delivered
when the 2012 Health and Social
Care Act legislated for disintegration.
But Rob Webster, Chief Executive of
the NHS Confederation, said: “There
is determination among leaders
across the system to deliver the Five
Year Forward View. This is the time
when commissioning should really
start to drive the changes that we
need to see. The narrative around all
of that is a placed based approach to
wellness, self-care for everyone with
a long-term condition and joined-up
care for people around general
practice involving the third sector and
social care and communities,
networks.”
Ray Jones, Professor of Social Work,
Kingston University, said a 28%
increase in demand for social care
and a 31% reduction in local social
authority social care budgets meant
the health and social care system
was out of balance. “Unless we
correct that there is no solution either
for the health service or social care.”
Professor Maureen Baker, Chair of the
Royal College of General Practitioners,
said the
Government could achieve its aims if
it focused on making the job of the GP
more attractive in order to recruit the
promised additional 5,000 GPs,
reviewed the requirement for seven
day working in general practice and
invested in the GP out of hours service
and made it more visible.
Saffron Cordery, Director of Policy and
Strategy, NHS Providers, said to
achieve its pledges the Government
needed to invest as much as possible
of the promised £8 bn in the NHS
now, adopt a more flexible approach
to workforce planning, focus on the
prevention agenda in particular
mental health and underpin
everything by integrating services.
AMBULANCE SERVICE STAKEHOLDERS MEET TO
DEFINE THE FUTURE OF SERVICE PROVISION
“Meeting at the Health + Care
was a fantastic opportunity for
ambulance commissioners
and other stakeholders to
come together and help shape
the network’s priorities for the
coming year,” said Jane
Hawkard, ambulance
commissioner and chair of
NHS Clinical Commissioners’
National Ambulance
Commissioners Network
(NACN).
18
Service commissioners and providers
attending the meeting were able to
take home copies of a new NACN
briefing paper outlining good