Liberating the NHS
The Coalition Government’s white paper “Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS” does does not appear to make any mention of public / patient involvement on the new proposed GP consortia, unlike the existing situation where at least we have NEDs on the PCTs and SHAs. I am assuming that there will be no NEDs on the GP consortia – all part of the overall cost reduction presumably.
Kingsley Manning and Matthew Swindells in their analysis of the white paper (“Liberating the NHS – the Next Turn of the Cork Screw”) question why commissioning consortia are restricted to GPs – “if patients are to be empowered and to have real choices why shouldn’t they have a choice as to who commissions their healthcare?”
These are interesting times for the NHS. NHS providers, such as Foundation Trusts, will need to develop excellent relations with their new commissioners, ie the GPs (and Local Authorities) – with a presumed need for relationship managers identified in the Trusts to deal with each consortia so that the GPs have one point of contact at the Trusts for all of the provider services – an opportunity for marketers and CRM perhaps?
