[A-List] UK corporate state: NHS "reform"

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Free private care on NHS to be extended

More choice for those on waiting lists, says Milburn

John Carvel, social affairs editor
Thursday October 3, 2002
The Guardian

Thousands of NHS patients will be given the chance of free treatment in
the private sector under a scheme announced yesterday by Alan Milburn,
the health secretary, to give more choice to people on the waiting list.

Since July about 2,000 heart patients who have waited more than six
months for an operation at an NHS hospital in England have become
eligible to be treated elsewhere in the NHS or in the private sector, at
home or abroad. Mr Milburn said nearly 400 had taken advantage of the
scheme.

Under the new plan patients waiting more than six months for cataract
surgery in London will be given the same option. By next spring this
will be extended to orthopaedic operations such as hip and knee
replacements for which the waiting has been notoriously long, causing
thousands of older people to endure pain and loss of mobility.

Mr Milburn said there would also be a maximum six month wait for ear,
nose and throat treatment, general surgery and other specialties. The
scheme will start in London and be extended later to other parts of
England.

The health secretary had been planning to announce the initiative during
a question and answer session at the Labour conference in Blackpool, but
he was not asked a relevant question. Civil servants at the Department
of Health put the material out instead.

According to the department, Mr Milburn said: "If we want a health
service which puts patients first, then patients have got to have more
power. And that means they've got to have some choice. So if their local
NHS hospital cannot offer them a shorter waiting time but another
hospital can they can decide to choose."

By the end of 2005 every hospital appointment would be booked for the
convenience of the patient. This would make it easier for patients and
their GPs to choose the hospital and consultant that best suited their
needs, Mr Milburn said.

He accelerated the timetable for reducing national maximum waits for
heart operations to three months. This had been due by 2008, but will
now be achieved by March 2005 - before the likely date for the next
election.

The health secretary deflected questions at fringe meetings yesterday
about his row with Gordon Brown, the chancellor, over the borrowing
powers of foundation hospitals, the elite establishments that are to be
allowed to break free from Whitehall control. He was also reticent about
progress of the Agenda for Change negotiation on restructuring of NHS
pay.

But Mr Milburn told delegates that all NHS staff would be given the
chance to get a higher education qualification through the NHS
university. Within five years all staff without a qualification would be
entitled to start a foundation degree course - the first step towards a
degree.

He said the McDonald's fast food corporation had run a university for
its staff for 25 years. Now the NHS would help its low paid ancillary
staff to become more qualified and better able to give a quality service
to patients.

Mr Milburn promised an extra £10m for areas of England with the
highest levels of coronary heart disease. This was in addition to the
additional £100m already invested this year.

He said choice would be introduced steadily and carefully, but it would
amount to a revolution in public services. "No longer will the hospitals
choose the patients. The patients will choose the hospitals. We will
have an NHS where patients no longer have to opt out, but can opt to
stay in."