Cut the waste

The Government has misspent much of the increased expenditure on the NHS. Here are some examples.

Over budget NHS IT programme

The cost of the new NHS computer system has already doubled - to an estimated £12.4bn. Many IT experts doubt that such a huge, centralised system can actually work.

In July 2006, the Computer Sciences Corporation data centre broke down, leaving 80 trusts without admin systems for several days. Two months later, Computer Weekly found that there had been 110 major incidents technical problems with the NHS IT system that had impacted on patient care.

Implementation has been severely delayed. Of the 155 acute trusts expected to be operating the system by the end of the 2006/7 year, only 16 were online.

Despite all the money being poured into the system, it doesn’t even have the support of medical professionals. According to a June 2007 survey, only a third of GPs would advise their patients to have their information go on to the national system. Four in five GPs believe that patient confidentiality is threatened by the system.

Botched reform

The NHS under Labour has been subjected to endless and contradictory reform.

Primary Care Groups were created in 1999 only to be replaced by Primary Care Trusts in 2000. Health Authorities were formally abolished in 2002 and replaced with new Strategic Health Authorities and reformed Primary Care Trusts. In 2006, both SHAs and PCTs were drastically reduced in number.

Patient and public involvement in the NHS has been reformed twice since 2002. Community Health Councils were replaced with Patient and Public Involvement Forums in 2002. Just 3 years after they were set up, the Government is now scrapping them.

The new dental contract has not helped patients find a dentist. More than 8 out of 10 dentists say the new contract had not improved access to NHS dental services for patients. Two million patients do not have access to an NHS dentist and are being forced to either go private, go on a waiting list or do without.

Labour’s financial mismanagement has encouraged a culture of waste within the NHS. The number of managers in the NHS is increasing almost three times as fast as the number of doctors and nurses.

Use of private sector providers imposed by Whitehall

The Government has imposed private providers on the different parts of the NHS - regardless of whether doing so improves local health services. It also often pays Independent Treatment Centres more than NHS hospitals for the same service. Three quarters of NHS chief executives say that their finances had been damaged by the Independent Sector Treatment Centres, with some calling the effect “disastrous”.

And yet in 2005 some medical centres operated by private health companies were treating as few as a quarter of the National Health Service patients they have been paid to handle.

The local health service must decide where and how best to integrate private providers. The private sector must also compete for patients on a level playing field with NHS hospitals. Private treatment centres should not be imposed on local communities by Whitehall. Local decision makers should decide where and how best to integrate private providers.