IN MY VIEW
When it comes to health-care, patients must be at the heart of everything. Alas too often they are on the side-lines. For years we’ve watched in dismay as our health service was driven away from patient-led care and dragged into target-led processes.
In the 13 years that I have represented North Dorset there have three different administrative structures to run the local National Health Service. Every change has given us more managers; none of them have been specifically designed to give us more doctors or nurses.
I can’t count how many times doctors have told me, on a personal and professional level, how frustrated they are by the way the system works. How their judgments and activities are restricted by the rigidity of the system, and how their clinical priorities have been distorted by narrow process targets. And if doctors feel demoralised, imagine what it’s like for the patient.
This is not how it’s supposed to be. We have the best doctors, nurses, scientists and researchers in the world. Our NHS should be boasting world class results; we should be brimming with confidence. But when a system is driven by bureaucracy rather than performance, talent is squandered and quality suffers. Most worryingly, patients lose out.
To be the best, we need to allow our best to get on with the job. So the system has got to change. In my view, the Government has rightly looked towards scrapping targets and curbing the culture of management that is suppressing doctors and failing patients. It will do so not by slashing services senselessly, but by working together with healthcare professionals to construct a framework that focuses on quality of careand the needs of patients. I hope that NHS Dorset will bear this in mind when deciding on future arrangements for Blandford Community Hospital, an invaluable facility that has seen considerable investment and support from local people over the years.
The good news nationally is thatw e finally have a concrete commitment to deliver what matters most to patients: results. For too long the focus has been on measuring inputs and processes that are remote to patients. The result has been the number of managers in the NHS increasing three times faster than the number of nurses, and a proliferation of targets - with over 100 major targets now governing doctors’ every movement.
Under new Government proposals, doctors will be moved away from form filling and box ticking and reconnected to the job they have been trained to do – treating their patients. One of the proposals’ major pillars is to hand power back to General Practitioners. This is a logical step forward that would boost healthcare and save on precious resources: GPs are concerned with the well-being of their patients. They understand the needs of their patients. Therefore they are best placed to design services that are right for them.
Allowing our doctors to take the lead will achieve better outcomes, make doctors accountable to their patients and improve quality across the system. In turn, patients will have a real voice and greater choice. Their interests will be at the heart of healthcare where they belong.
To protect the NHS, to get the best out of the service, there has to be a shakeup. Putting power back to the frontline will help us to create the kind of NHS we all want and deserve: a health service which trusts its doctors, listens to its patients and whose quality of service reflects the calibre of its clinicians.