Main Features of the Current Reforms to the National Health Service - Coursework Example

?Main features of the current reforms to the NHS based on the White Paper The National Health Service in provides free healthcare for all, regardless of the ability to pay and based on need. The National Health Service publishes policies and strategies on a wide range of issues that are relevant for the modernization, patient safety, and innovation of National Health Service, as well as resources for NHS managers. This paper however seeks to outline the main feature of the current reforms to the National Health Service based on the 2010 White Paper. The 2010 White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service got published in 2010 July. This paper sets out the long term vision of the government for the future of The National Health Service. Basically, the 2010 White Paper exhibits reforms of the National Health Service with features such as: system that makes the patients the heart of all the activities carried out by the National Health Service; reforms characterized by liberation and empowerment of clinicians in order to innovate with liberty and freedom and focus on improving the services of health care; and reforms that focus on continual improvement things that matter to the customers and patients, as well as focusing on the health care outcome. However, this is not all. The 2010 White Paper has detailed more features of the current reforms to the National Health Service. According to the paper, the National Health Service will be more effective and efficient in its services and activities if the features of the current reforms as documented in the paper are intensively and extensively implemented. Clinicians will also be able to make patients the center of all their activities in the National Health Service and evaluation of the health care outcomes for effectiveness and efficiency will also carried out. The 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service upholds that the current reforms for the National Health Service are very significant to the population in need of the health care services. Because of this, the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service has documented features of the current reforms to the National Health Service. The paper documents the following as the features of the current reforms to the National Health Service in line with the government policies: the government supports the principles and values of the National Health Service. A comprehensive health care services available to everyone based on their need and not ability to pay, and free at the point of delivery and use; increase of expenditure on health in each parliamentary year in real terms; and a National Health Service that accomplishes results which are rated among the best in the whole world; putting the patients at the heart of all the services of the National Health Service through greater control and choice and by information revolution; reforms that improves efficiency and cut on bureaucracy; reforms with improved health care outcomes; and reforms with autonomy, democratic legitimacy and accountability. The 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service has a detailed summary of what the features of the current reforms of the National Health Service should be (Department of Health 2007, p. 20). The above outlined features makes the primary features of the reforms of the National Health Service, however, the following are also documented in the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service as secondary features of the current reforms of the National Health Service: Reforms that are characterized by shared decision making as the norm of the National Health Service Reforms that enable the patients to have full access to any information they need, make informed choices concerning their care, and obtain an increase control over their medical records. Reforms that allow patients to make choices of any service provider in the National Health Service, choice of GP practice, choice of led team consultant, and choice of treatment. The reforms also allows for extension of these choices to maternity via the currently available networks of the maternity. Reforms characterized by patient ability to rate clinical department and hospitals according to the health care quality they are provided with in the respective facilities. The reforms also require all the hospitals to remain open and talk about their mistakes with the patients, as well as inform patients in case something goes wrong. Reforms that advocate for focus on the personalized care which reflects on the health and care of individual patients, their needs, and support their careers. These reforms will also encourage local partnerships and strong joint arrangements. The reforms are also characterized by a system that strengthens a collective voice of the public and patients through local authorities led arrangement and at the national level via a powerful commission. The reforms also seek to ensure that all patients and the public in general benefits from these reforms regardless of their background or needs. The 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service has also detailed that the current reforms of the National Health Service are characterized by features that seek to improve the health care outcomes to patients and the public. In order to accomplish this ambition of achieving world class health care outcomes, the services of the National Health Service must be focused on the health care outcomes and the defined quality standards that are used to achieve them. The 2010 White Paper details that, in this process, the objectives of the government are; to increase safety, to reduce morbidity and mortality, and to improve patient experience as well as the health care outcomes for all. The reforms also have features that hold the National Health Service accountable against clinically evidence based and credible measures of outcome, and not the process targets. The reforms require that targets with no particular clinical jurisdiction be removed from the system. Nevertheless, the reforms advocates for a culture of active responsibility, open information and challenge that will ensure the safety of patients is above every other thing in the National Health Service and that any sort of failure like in Mid-Staffordshire must be detected whatsoever. The reforms primarily are characterized by quality standards that have been developed by NICE. These inform the commissioning of all the National Health Service payment and care systems. The reforms, in relation to this feature, demands that inspection against the quality essential standards be carried out to ascertain compliance to quality standards (Department of Health 2004, p. 202). In a nutshell, the reforms require, according to the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, that the drug companies be paid according to the value of the new medicines in order to ensure improved and better access for both patients and the public, and to promote innovation so as to have effective drugs and improve the value for money. In fact, the current reforms have ensured that the National Health Service creates a new Cancer Drug Fund, to operate beginning 2011 April; this fund was aimed at supporting patients to get all the drugs that are recommended by their doctors. The 2010 White Paper, in the reforms, also document that money will, through transparent, stable, and comprehensive payment system, follow patients across the National Health Service, in order to enhance and promote quality health care, support the choices made by the patients, and drive effectiveness and efficiency. In fact the reforms, according to the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, details that the health care providers will get payments based on their delivery of the health care services and performance. Payments are required to have a reflection of the health care outcomes and provide incentives for much better quality, and not just the activities themselves. Looking at these current reforms for the National Health Service, the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, has documented adequate features that the implementers of the reforms; are supposed to work through to ensure the patients and the public receive health care services as they need them regardless of their ability to pay or background (Boyle et al. 2010, p. 16). As seen in the executive summary of the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, the features of the current reforms for the National Health Service include all elements of autonomy, democratic legitimacy, and accountability. The reforms of the government aim to empower health care providers and professionals, provide them with much autonomy, and make them much more accountable, in return, for the health care outcomes and results achieved by them, accountable to the public both at national level and local level, and accountable to patients through the choices they make. The 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, asserts that the current reforms will give the National Health Service much greater freedom and even help in preventing the micromanagement by politics (Department of Health 2003, p. 200). These reforms will also see to it that the government devolves responsibility and power of commissioning services to the health care providers and professionals, who are closest to the patients and the public in general. They will also ensure that the practice teams and the GPs also work in consortia. In addition, the reforms aim to strengthen democratic legitimacy at both the local level and the national level, and the local authorities to promote the merging of the social care, local National Health Service services, and improvement of health. This will ensure that the National Health Service achieves it goals and mission to the patients and the public generally. The 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service has in fact summarized the characteristic features of the current reforms as they appear in the government policies. The executive summary has also detailed the mechanisms through which the recommendations in the reforms can be achieved following the formation of committees to implement the recommendations accordingly throughout the hospitals. The hospitals are then expected to give information to the patients including their mistakes and weaknesses for evaluation purposes by the National Health Service (Black 2000, p.25). According to the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, the current reforms for the National Health Service also has features that will ensure the following: Establishing of accountable and independent National Health Service commissioning Board, that will be upfront on the accomplishment of the health care outcomes, on improvement of quality, on allocating and accounting for the resources of the National Health Service, and on promoting the involvement of and choices by patients. This Board will also have the mandate to tackle all inequalities and promote quality in accessing healthcare. In fact, the reforms seek to limit ministerial powers on day to day decisions of the National Health Service. Creating the largest sector of the social enterprise in the world through giving the staff of the National Health Service opportunity to have a say in the strategy of the organization, and increasing the freedom of the foundation trust; this will form part of the National Health Service trusts. Monitoring of the services as part of economic regulation; this will promote efficient and effective providers of care and health, competition, and safeguard the continuity of the health care services as well as regulate their prices. Strengthening the duties and functions of the Care Quality Commission as an efficient and effective quality inspectorate across both social care and health care Rind-fencing the budget of the public health that is allocated in order to reflect relative health outcomes of the population, to promote activities and actions that minimize and reduce inequalities in health through the new health premium (Berridge and Blume 2003, p. 241). In summary, the current reforms will also cut on bureaucracy and improve efficiency just as discussed in the paragraphs above. In order to cut on the bureaucracy, the National Health Service will have to accomplish unprecedented effectiveness and efficiency gains in order to meet the financial challenges faced currently and the future costs of technological and demographic change through the savings that have been reinvested in the National Health Service front line services. According to the 2010 White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the National Health Service, the government will, of efficiency savings, release up to ? 20 billion by the year 2014. This will be reinvested in order to sustain health care quality and outcome improvement. The 2010 White Paper also document that the government will cut costs of the National Health Service management by more than 45% in the next 4 years. This will free up more resources for the health care services in the front line. Finally, the reforms require that the National Health Service bodies be simplified and reduce the functions of National Health Service in the Department of Health radically (Becker 1963, p. 200). The reforms also seek to streamline the functions of the Department of Health concerning the services of the National Health Service. Bibliography Becker, Howard 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press Berridge, V., and Blume, S. eds., 2003. Poor health. Social inequality before and after the Black report. London: Frank Cass. Black, D., 2000. The Black Report. London: Department of Health and Social Security. Boyle, D. Coote, A. Sherwood, C. & Slay, J 2010. Right Here, Right Now: Taking Co-production into the Mainstream. New York: NESTA British Institute of Human Rights, 2007. Human Rights in Healthcare - A Framework for Local Action. London: HMSO. Department for Work and Pensions, 2003. Diversity in disability: Exploring the interactions between disability, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality. Leeds: HMSO. Department of Health, 2003. Tackling Health Inequalities: A Program for Action. London: HMSO. Department of Health, 2004. The NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (NHS KSF) and the Development Review Process. London: HMSO. Read More