Forum topic: Help defend local NHS services by joining your Patient Participation Group

The major reorganisation of the NHS that is being quietly carried out throughout England

• England is being divided into 44 different areas (ours is called North Central London), each of which is being required to develop its own plans to reorganise the way medical services are provided – in effect, the Health Service will no longer be National.
• The 44 areas will be required to devise methods of reducing hospital admissions – in theory by providing care “closer to home”.  There’s something to be said in favour of this – or at least there would be if we had enough surgeries, GPs and nurses to work in them, and local social care services.  But we don’t – there is a growing shortage of all these people and services.
• Each of the 44 areas will be allocated a set amount of per-capita funding by the government and will not be allowed to run up a deficit
• In order to live within their means (which will almost certainly be insufficient), local NHS managers will be taking steps to reduce non-emergency NHS operations – for instance, cataract treatment, hip and knee operations, hernia surgery.  They will do this by insisting that patients must wait for many months in the hope that their pain will be diminished by physiotherapy or other “conservative” treatments.
• People keen to relieve their pain and anxious for their condition not to deteriorate will,  if they can afford it, pay privately for knee, hip, cataracts etc operations so that they don’t have to wait – many people already do so.
• The result will be a health service that remains free but will no longer be comprehensive – it won’t treat all conditions or it will make patients wait in pain.  So we end up with a two-tier system: All treatments will be available quickly to those with money, the rest will be expected to be grateful that they get any treatment at all.