NHS reconfiguration ‘can benefit patient care’

The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) has claimed that the planned reconfiguration of the health service could be of benefit to patients – but only if doctors and managers become more influential in the debate for change.

Recent plans indicate that up to 60 hospitals could be affected by the reorganisation, which will see some services moved or closed in a drive to create a more efficient NHS.

Richard Brooks, a spokesman for ippr, told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that healthcare professionals and managers need to lead the debate on change.

He said: “At the moment it is very unclear to people why decisions are taken and what we really need are doctors and health service mangers leading these debates explaining to people why healthcare services need to change and why that is good for patient care.”

Recently, the government has been criticised amid suggestions that health services in some non-Labour voting areas had received different or less favourable treatment.

Andrew Lansley, Conservative health spokesman, speaking on the same programme, said the notion was “very disturbing” and that it was only now emerging how service cuts are worked out.

However, the public health minister, Rosie Winterton, has denied that the reconfiguration of NHS services was politically biased by area. She stated to the Today programme: “There is a very, very clear process as to how these decisions are made and it is absolutely right that is the case.”