How is the Government planning to enable the next round of health reform?
NHS England led by chief executive Simon Stevens is to draw up a 10-year plan to make improvements to services using the extra funding announced by Prime Minister Theresa May.
In a BBC interview she said the increase was expected to lead to improvements in emergency services, waiting times, cancer survival rates and mental health services, and added that the government is also committed to supporting social care services.
Work preparing a green paper on healthcare is also ongoing and a clinically-led review is to ensure services are working to deliver the right targets, she added.
Mrs May revealed the planned legislative change would ensure the internal market does not present barriers to integrated services and to deal with what she called the problem that clinical commissioning groups are required to operate perhaps 200 contracts with providers.
Changes of this kind would effectively mark the end of the experiment with the internal market introduced in 2012/13 by Lord Lansley during his period as Secretary of State for Health.
Bureaucracy and regulation were to come in for scrutiny as NHS leaders were spending too much time on them.
Mr Stevens later said he particularly welcomed the Prime Minister’s request for the NHS to propose changes to the legislation that will speed progress on implementing the coming 10-year plan.
Further Information
HSJ: May expects new money to deliver improvements in key services
HSJ: Stevens: Law change will ‘speed us on the journey’ of new plan
HSJ: Targets under review and NHS legislation open to change – PM
HSJ: Theresa May: top NHS leaders ‘waste too much time’ on bureaucracy