Mandate for NHS reforms

Stormy weather for Labour's NHS reforms.

David Oliver: a fairy tale mandate for the NHS.

Just after the 2010 UK election, when I was still seconded to the Department of Health, the new English health secretary, Andrew Lansley, came to meet the department’s doctors to set out his vision for the NHS. This led to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, now widely regarded as a costly and needless disruption lacking electoral mandate. Ironically, a different mandate was part of this visio...

For-profit companies will strip NHS assets under proposed reforms.

The unfolding cautionary tale of Southern Cross illustrates the fundamental problems with the outsourcing of public services to corporate bodies (BMJ 2011;342:d3535, doi:10.1136/bmj. d3535). Its crisis originated when it was bought by private equity firms, which buy companies, like Southern Cross, that own unmortgaged land and buildings. After selling, leasing back, or borrowing against these a...

NHS reforms in England: the implications for chemotherapy commissioning

For oncology, one of the biggest effects of the reforms to the National Health Service (NHS) in England has been the designation of systemic anticancer treatments (other than hormonal agents) as a specialised service. This means that all decisions regarding the commissioning of chemotherapy are made at the national level via NHS England (NHSE), under expert guidance from the Chemotherapy Clinic...

Evaluating the Labour Government's English NHS health system reforms: the 2008 Darzi reforms.

Starting in 2002, the UK Labour Government of 1997-2010 introduced a series of changes to the National Health Service (NHS) in England designed to increase patients' choices of the place of elective hospital care and encourage competition among public and private providers of elective hospital services for NHS-funded patients. In 2006, the Department of Health initiated the Health Reform Evalua...