100 days of coalition Government lays ground for major healthcare reform

With a furious Parliamentary timetable now in recess, after the Con-Dem coalition sought to make its presence felt upon major political issues while itself looking to adjust to a new and untypical landscape of politics, it is perhaps in a moment of relative calm that it becomes more beneficial to reflect upon some of the healthcare announcement and developments that will effect care professionals in the years to come.

The first major announcement came in the shape of Andrew Lansley’s White Paper, on the 12th July, ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’, but one such major publication was not considered to be enough by the new Health Secretary as, in the days and weeks that followed, announcement after announcement greeted the healthcare sector detailing the new vision for the future. Among these were a review into palliative care funding, the use of personal social care budgets, and the restructuring of waiting times, together with major changes to regulatory body the Care Quality Commission’s inspection remit. All this at a time when an ageing population and rising budget requirements threaten to make healthcare one of the most contentious and, perhaps, politically unstable issues, at both a local and central government level over the course of this Parliament.

Though the new Health Secretary has so far avoided being among the first ministers to embarrass the new Government – that honour falling to Education Secretary Michael Gove with his publishing of false information on grants to schools – the White Paper itself was not without its controversy. The paper announced a major shift in policy in relation to how public sector funds will be spent, with the Government ready to put its faith in the expertise of GPs to decide where money is better spent, rather than leaving it in the hands of NHS managers. A divisive measure, derided by the Labour opposition benches, claiming that new ministers have ‘no evidence’ at all that GPs are better placed to make those decisions.

On the other hand the move is also being seen as a brave one in respect of the fact that the failure to reform public spending was one of Tony Blair’s acknowledged regrets, the former PM admitting that his first Parliament never managed to pick up the reins on the issue, as had been their publicised intent. With this in consideration, and with the health and care sectors both working to their full capacity, perhaps doing something, as opposed to nothing, will prove the wiser decision than delaying for a more black-and-white proposal that may not be forthcoming at a time of economic uncertainty.

New Prime Minister David Cameron has himself been regularly called upon during his first months in office to explain how the country can achieve more effective public services for less expenditure. The situation is one he insists is far from hopeless, likening the task to that of big businesses like Tesco’s who each year find ways to reduce expenditure without reducing the quality of their services – ‘…they don’t think to themselves that the reduction of costs, which they do on a permanent basis, is going to make their service worse’ (speaking on the BBC’s Westminster Hour). Though cynics might say that, however sensible such measures may sound, doing things better for cheaper is almost a long-running political joke, with commentators knowing it to have been an argument politicians have been using for years to answer funding problems, but one that no Government has ever effectively achieved.

Time spent in power and some of the failures that come with it have, of course, been known to dampen the enthusiasm of those in power, but for now the Department of Health assures us that ‘Improving the quality of care will become the main purpose of the NHS’, and the coalition will have failed if such a crucial time to secure the well-being of many becomes a defining time for all the wrong reasons.