Paul Burstow, now a health minister, has a long record of campaigning for better coordination and integration between the different services which look after people’s health. So although the government isn’t talking publicly about which part of the health White Paper has been driven by whom, you can see Paul’s influence at work, as reported by The Guardian:
The sector has long pressed for the joining-up of health and social care – and the white paper seeks to promote this, particularly through the proposed new role for local government in respect of public health.
It also sets out an increased responsibility for NICE:
Buried in the NHS white paper is the detail that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) should “extend its remit to social care”. Does this signal the end of the institutional independence of social care?
Well, it’s looking alarmingly like the end of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (Scie). Set up in 2001 to identify and spread good practice in the sector, the body has found its stride in recent years after a shaky start. But it now faces the loss to Nice of much of its government-funded work.
Paul Burstow, care services minister, told the Guardian that Nice should set quality standards for the whole of an individual’s care experience. It made no sense for its remit to stop at the point on the care pathway at which responsibility for the individual passed from the NHS to social care.
Scie would “continue to have a role, but it won’t be the same role they played directly alongside Nice in the past”, Burstow said. “Some aspects of that role will transfer to Nice and we are in discussions with Scie about how that will be done.”
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10 Comments
There are more comments from Paul Burstow here:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/07/13/114899/burstow-pcts-scrapped-to-aid-health-and-social-care-links.htm
But is Burstow behind any of the other proposals? Y’know, the ones that make me and many of my friends want to weep. i don’t recall these sorts of proposals in the Programme For Government, which I supported but with reservations.
Please don’t let me have spent hours knocking on doors, or got blisters from leafleting, or operated a riso through the night for a party that’s going to have a hand in dismantling the NHS.
Helen
Apparently he is behind the abolition of PCTs. The first paragraph of the article I linked to says this:
“Primary care trusts were no longer “fit for purpose” and had to go as the price to deliver integrated health and social care, according to care services minister Paul Burstow.”
Obviously this policy runs quite contrary to what is said in the coalition agreement about no further reorganisation of the NHS (not to mention elected representatives on the PCTs). Nevertheless it has been adopted by a Tory secretary of state, apparently with the full support of his Lib Dem minister.
I find it difficult to see how the party is going to maintain any separate identity at all on this basis.
Anthony: “Obviously this policy runs quite contrary to what is said in the coalition agreement about no further reorganisation of the NHS”
Either the coalition agreement was a con job, or the government has cobbled together a plan for root and branch reorganisation of the largest public service in Europe in a matter of weeks. I’ve spent longer than this planning my new kitchen.
@ Helen
‘Please don’t let me have spent hours knocking on doors, or got blisters from leafleting, or operated a riso through the night for a party that’s going to have a hand in dismantling the NHS.’
“We will stop the top-down re-organisations of the NHS….”
“We will ensure that there is a stronger voice for patients locally through directly elected individuals on the boards of their local primary care trusts (PCT). The remainder of the PCT’s board will be appointed by the relevant local authority or authorities, and the Chief Executive and principal officers will be appointed by the Secretary of State on the advice of the new independent NHS board. This will ensure the right balance between locally accountable indiviuals and technical expertise.”
“The local PCT will act as a champion for patients and commission those residual services that are best undertaken at a wider level rather than directly by GPs. It will also take responsibility for improving public health for people in their area working closely with the local authority and other local organisations.”
CROWN COPYRIGHT TORY/LIBERAL DEMOCRAT COALITION AGREEMENT MAY 2010
Embarrassed Lib Dems? You should be.
The ink is barely dry on your coalition agreement and your government has torn it up. Once again you have been duped. The most radical reforms to the NHS for decades(according to the right wing press) did not appear from nowhere.The Tories have had 13 long years to refine their plans to dismantle the NHS. Even when the Tories were cynically negotiating the agreement with the Lib Dems they must have known that they had no intention of honouring the paragraphs quoted above; but they weren’t going to let a little thing like a coalition agreement or not having a mandate stop them. The Tories didn’t even get past the winning post and the Lib Dems got a far less share of the vote than the Tories, therefore neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems have a mandate to dismantle the NHS, destroy the lives of the people employed in it or destroy the lives of the people who depend on it. Nor has your government a mandate to introduce back door privatisation of the NHS and get the GPs to make the ideological cuts that the Tories are gleefully embarking upon. Even the most naive of Lib Dems must now acknowledge that your coalition agreement is not worth the paper it is written on. Axing schools, destroying the infrastructures of the NHS: your government seems intent on dismantling the structures of the welfare state and meanwhile the gamblers in the city who caused the crisis are allowed to get off scott free. Now only the Labour Party is the true torchbearer for Beveridge.
But thank you, Helen, for restoring my faith in some Liberal activists. I hope that there are many more of you who will resist your government’s abuse of democracy.
Shall we disregard the goadings of these Spartist trolls and focus on the issues highlighted in the thread?
Paul Burstow MP is alleged to have said:
“Primary care trusts were no longer “fit for purpose” and had to go as the price to deliver integrated health and social care, according to care services minister Paul Burstow.”
If Paul actually did say this, he is talking 100% codswallop.
In my local area, the integration of health and social care is actually being driven and implemented by the PCT, while the providers have been dragging their feet.
How are GPs going to integrate health and social care? Who is going to represent them on partnership bodies? How are they going to involve the third sector, and work with local authorities? PCTs are tailor-made to do all these things.
One can sneer at accountants and administrators as much as one likes, but unlike healthcare professionals, they are trained in management and have objectivity which the professionals necessarily lack. Can GPs really be expected to monitor their own performance?
Sesenco: “One can sneer at accountants and administrators as much as one likes…”
I heard one GP on the radio saying that he’d probably have to employ another *doctor* solely to take on the extra managerial work.
What a waste of six years at medical school. This policy is so barmy one could call it “Govian”.
Comment from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/14/nhs-reforms-conspiracy-privatise
I should have said “SOME of them are trained in management”. Not all of them, obviously.
Oh, and I should have said “PCTs are tailor-made to FACILITATE all these things”. GPs do have to be involved, but they shouldn’t be expected to PM the whole process.