The BMA is urging the public to support its Look After our NHS campaign against the role of commercial companies providing NHS care in England.
Successive government policies have created a market in healthcare and allowed commercially run firms to compete against existing NHS trusts and GP practices to provide NHS care. The BMA is concerned that this is having an adverse impact on many parts of the NHS in England.
The BMA’s Look After our NHS campaign website has been revamped so that members of the public can show their support for an NHS which is publicly funded and publicly provided.
Next week the BMA is sending campaign packs to each of its members in England - over 100,000 doctors and medical students. The packs contain posters picturing businessmen taking money out of the NHS, and call on the public to “help us put patients before profits”.
Leaflets for patients, warning them that “your local GP practice, hospital or community health service could be run by a commercial, profit-driven company in the future”, will also be distributed via GP practices and BMA representatives in hospitals.
The campaign packs for doctors contain a brochure warning of the impact market-based reforms are having on the NHS. It states that the creation of a market in the NHS has meant an increase in bureaucracy; the number of senior managers in the NHS rose by 91% between 1995 and 2008 - more than double the increase in numbers of doctors and nurses.
It also says many private NHS providers have received millions in guaranteed payments for contracts, despite treating fewer patients than planned; on average, the first wave of Independent Sector Treatment Centres delivered just 85% of activity paid for - suggesting a shortfall of £220 million on the £1.47 billion contracts.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of BMA council, said: “We want an NHS with patients, not profits, at its heart. The public values the NHS as a publicly provided, publicly funded service. Like doctors, they do not want vital funding to be diverted to shareholders.
“Doctors have already backed the campaign. Now members of the public can show politicians the extent of opposition to commercialisation of their NHS.”
The NHS Confederation, which represents managers and employers, has however come out in opposition to the campaign. Nigel Edwards, NHS Confederation director of policy, said: “With the £20bn of savings in the NHS required over the next five years, the focus must continue on reducing costs while also driving up quality. Given the scale of this challenge, to rule out any use of the independent or third sector would remove a very important source of innovation and change that can help to deliver improvements.”
Read the leaflet being distributed in surgeries and hospitals.
Tags: ISTCs, Privatisation
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