NHS WHITE PAPER

NHS White Paper Reforms

NHS White Paper Reforms

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make discussion on the current reforms to the NHS based on 2010 White Paper "Equity and Excellence; Liberating the NHS". The paper discusses the main proposals in the white paper. White paper has focused on different issues of the currnet reforms in NHS, and have proposed many situations. The main proposals in white paper are related to the decline of national evaluations in the productivity of hospitals, the focus of Ministry of Health to meet the Government's vision for improving the performance as part of a budget deal, and other aspects. In 2000, the British Ministry of Health published the National Health Service (NHS) Plan, a ten-year strategic plan to reform the NHS (Rigby, 2008, p. 579)

Discussion

Hospital productivity has declined over the past 10 years. Despite a significant increase in funding, hospitals have used these funds to meet national priorities, but they need more direction, management and clinical engagement to optimize these additional resources, according to a report by the National Audit Office. The plan states that the NHS fails in its services due to lack of funding and recommends a substantial increase in funding to meet public expectations in regard to reducing waiting times for services, a better paid workforce and innovative care to high-quality patient-centered and improvements in the buildings of local care. The plan emphasizes systemic problems of the NHS such as lack of national standards and targets set to improve performance.

The NHS and the Ministry of Health are that, in 2013-14, savings of £ 15 to 20 billion per year to be reinvested in health care. About 40% of these savings come from improved efficiency in hospitals (Rudd, 2007, p. 44). To support this target, the NHS has made Quality Strategy, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP).

1.National evaluations have measured a decline in the productivity of hospitals.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that, since 2000, the total productivity of the NHS in the UK fell by an average of 0.2% per year and productivity in hospitals has decreased by about 1.4% per year.

2.The Ministry of Health focused to meet the Government's vision for improving the performance as part of a budget deal.

Increased funding of NHS hospitals since 2009 has improved the availability and quality of services, staff salaries, facilities and waits times. National contracts for funding of the NHS implemented since 2003 have increased costs of hospitals and are not always used effectively to improve productivity. The tariffs under the system of payment by results by the Department strengthened certain practices (Maynard, 2005, p. 171). There have been delays in implementing the national rates for all hospital operations and quality of the information used to fund hospitals varies. Other departmental initiatives to improve productivity must be evaluated further and remain under-used in hospitals.

3.Hospitals do not focus enough on improving productivity.

Hospital managers focus primarily on achieving national targets whilst maintaining a balanced budget, rather than specifically on performance ...