National Policy Forum - Your Southeast CLP representatives

The work of the Health Commission, June 2006
By Martin Phillips

After the media frenzy over NHS funding and dentistry, the Health Policy Commission decided that we needed to examine these two areas early on, to discover the facts behind the headlines. Our meetings are always well attended by the ministers, so we have been able to examine the funding mechanism in detail with the ministerial team. We also took evidence directly from the head of an NHS hospital trust, who identified a number of cultural changes he has implemented in his trust that have improved control and made staff feel responsible for their own areas. He also highlighted some of the ways in which NHS managers have been disguising problems in the past.

Our conclusions are fairly clear – that the media reports on job cuts are grossly exaggerated, but that there are some trusts with a lack of management control. The financial control in the NHS does need to be tightened. The Commission will also be meeting a PCT head to gather more information on their position, as the amalgamation of PCTs will clearly have to be implemented efficiently.

The Commission has also been able to review the Health White Paper and there was broad agreement that the White Paper has identified the areas of health policy that need work – namely, strengthening community medicine and health improvement; building better mental health services; tackling health inequalities between regions; and most especially the issues raised by the boundaries between health care and social care in the elderly.

The interface between the NHS and the social care system is one that we all agree needs a lot more work, as it is clear that great problems still exist over bureaucracy and funding. We are going to examine ways in which we can use local councillors and party members to scrutinise the services across the country.

The Commission has just completed its section of the NPF year 1 document. We have identified a number of questions that we really want to hear from you about. We hope that CLPs can identify not just problems, but ways in which your own local NHS has solved problems and improved its service. We can then look to pass this knowledge to the wider NHS.