Our fellows, the medical doctors who diagnose and treat cancer, have registered main issues with us about the planned model for commissioning cancer companies in Staffordshire (NHS cancer care faces privatisation, two July). We applaud the ambition of joining up care for a population larger than that typically served by a single NHS organisation and the want to focus solutions on the demands of patients. However, we fear that there could be unintended consequences.
Illustration by Gary Kempston GKIMAGES.COM
These changes could destabilise crucial cancer diagnosis and treatment method companies, and are previously major to organizing blight with regard to support enhancements. This could lead – in the quick-term – to worse companies for sufferers. This is a brave initiative but one particular that should be regarded a gamble in a well being economic system even now feeling the effects of the Mid-Staffordshire disaster. Lengthy-phrase arranging has proved an elusive goal in Uk public providers. The leaders of this initiative are in no position to predict, let alone handle, what might come about above the period of the 10-12 months contract – politically or financially. It appears unlikely that the architects of these alterations will be capable to see by way of their vision or to be held accountable for its consequences. What we could see is contracts that cannot be dismantled with no serious penalties. Higher clarity is essential with respect to the part of the “prime supplier” who will not in fact be supplying providers but managing services offered by other individuals.
It is clear that individuals on the ground who will be relied on to make this take place have nevertheless to be meaningfully engaged, and we have produced their issues acknowledged to Macmillan Cancer Assistance and NHS England who are foremost this initiative. Clinicians share the ambition for an integrated technique to cancer care and need to be more closely concerned if this gamble is not to fail.
Giles Maskell
President, Royal College of Radiologists
• The Transforming Cancer and Finish of Life care programme in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent is an progressive and brave instance of the voluntary and public sectors working alongside patients, carers and health and social care professionals to provide the best possible outcomes for folks affected by cancer.
Inspired by the experiences of people with cancer or those who have cared for an individual at the finish of their daily life in the region, this programme will test an integrated method to the commissioning and management of care. By appointing a single organisation to take responsibility for managing the complete cancer care journey, we can demand actually seamless care, and make certain no patient or carer will get misplaced in a complex method.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and NHS England will appoint organisations with expertise in managing contracts, ensuring that all the services partners perform collaboratively all around each and every patient and will not change the organisations who immediately provide cancer care providers. Whoever is appointed will be topic to rigorous oversight and scrutiny for top quality, patient security and outcomes, no matter whether they are from the NHS, the voluntary sector, or from the personal sector.
At the heart of this programme is the want to truly reach and improve the lives of men and women affected by cancer. That is why Macmillan and our partners have manufactured positive men and women impacted by cancer, alongside clinicians, have been and will continue to be concerned in the programme at every stage.
Ciarán Devane
Chief executive, Macmillan Cancer Support
• Last night I attended and spoke at a guide launch of Mike Marqusee’s book The Value of Expertise: Writings on Residing with Cancer, in which he spoke movingly about his treatment method at Barts and his fears that the attacks on the NHS will imply sufferers in the long term will not have the exceptional care he has acquired.
Absolutely the mixed CCGs in Staffordshire should have been speaking to their existing NHS hospitals and asking them to collaborate to offer a far more responsive and streamlined support just before embarking on this massive experiment with taxpayers’ money? In the earlier decade, the NHS (underneath Labour) made wonderful strides in strengthening cancer companies by means of networks this kind of as that in east London, but in 2011 Andrew Lansley withdrew funding for these regardless of their established successes.
Now we have groups of GPs, with no coaching in epidemiology, oncology or commissioning, generating strategies to invest millions on an untried technique with personal businesses, who have no expertise in cancer care, eagerly waiting to make profits from these sick sufferers. Similarly, the Cambridgeshire CCG, which desires to consider a radically distinct technique of care for the elderly, is organizing to commit above a billion pounds of our funds. This is madness, and the dishonesty of the existing government (“there is no privatisation” “there will be no best-down reorganisation”) is matched by the Division of Health’s spokesperson who explained: “NHS competition guidelines have not transformed underneath this government.” What about the Overall health and Social Care Act 2012, or the part 75 regulation that was passed this year? It is time for the public to wake up, stand up and fight for our NHS by lobbying their MPs.
Wendy Savage
President, Preserve Our NHS Public
• The finger of responsibility for the exponential privatisation of the NHS factors ineluctably at the Liberal Democrats, in distinct Nick Clegg and Shirley Williams. Given that this did not attribute in the coalition agreement, it ought to have been Clegg’s work to scrutinise Andrew Lansley’s white paper. Had he done so he could have halted the total scheme. Then Williams promised to have part 75 of the Well being and Social Care Act amended in the Lords to reduce, if not abolish, the necessity to tender for companies. This didn’t happen. But it is not good sufficient for Andy Burnham to say that the public has not offered the government permission to “place the NHS up for sale”. What is now necessary is a clear Labour election pledge to reverse all NHS privatisation since 2010.
Robin Wendt
Chester, Cheshire
• Certainly we should be concerned if cancer solutions are to be detached from the NHS and offered at the whim of private businesses? Well being minister Jane Ellison admits that the government has misplaced manage of the NHS so presumably huge businesses are chasing the NHS dollar with minor public manage. As a GP for virtually thirty many years, I know that patients are at their most vulnerable when they have a possibly fatal sickness, and are not in a position to make choices effortlessly or keep track of their care. Such patients particularly need to have to truly feel that the single goal of their carers is get them as properly as possible for as long as possible, and not to have at the back of their thoughts that organizations are creating choices for revenue rather than for them.
Dr Ron Singer
Chair, doctors’ part of Unite
• Will private contractors be paid on a charge-per-case basis, and hence make far more earnings if their individuals will not dwell for prolonged?
Dr Richard Turner
Harrogate, Yorkshire
Consequences of privatising cancer care |@guardianletters
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