NEWS RELEASE
I issued the following press release on 17.05.2006
Lynne Jones has made the following
statement regarding today’s announcement on the organisation of PCTs in Birmingham:
Today’s announcement that there
will be a reduction in the number of PCTs in Birmingham from four to three gets it wrong
again.
NHS organisation in Birmingham has been going round in circles
for years and years. We had a Birmingham Health Authority (Teaching) with five
district management teams, then four health authorities going down to three and finally we
fixed on the logical arrangement of one Health Authority for the whole City. In
2001, the Labour Government should have retained this position. We could have
achieved our aim of more local influence by capitalising on bottom up developments in GP
commissioning. Groups of GPs, who largely rejected the Tory Government’s
fundholding arrangements, were working together to plan for better services for their
patients.
In 2001, in opposing the setting up of four PCTs, which the
majority of GPs also opposed, I predicted the inevitability of the current reorganisation
to three PCTs because the driving force has always been with hospitals not community-based
services. The new configuration will not achieve the Government’s stated aims
of co-terminocity within local authority services because Birmingham City Council
decentralises services to districts based on new constituency boundaries (as are local
strategic partnerships). As a result of today’s flawed decision it is
inevitable that Birmingham’s Health Services will at some time in the future face
further reorganisation back to the only rational body – one PCT for the whole of
Birmingham. Re-discovery of GP commissioning and the setting up of consortia of GP
practices which has now begun in earnest make such an arrangement all the more logical.
Birmingham people identify with their own neighbourhood and with
the City and not with areas based on points of the compass. It is on this reality
that the organisation of our health services should be based.
E N D S
For Lynne Jones' response to the consultation
COMMISSIONING A PATIENT-LED NHS please click here
