NHS Progress this week

CfH trials it's new portable communications system, yesterday

1.PBC is dying on its feet. It has a much life in it as the parrot in Monty Python’s sketch. It will have even less when it is used by PCTs as a means of keeping their budgets secure, rather than as a means of improving services and making savings which could be redeployed.

"Now Dr David Jenner, GMS contract lead at the NHS Alliance, has said he is 'seriously worried' about the future of the initiative.
'I've seen PCTs reclaiming all the savings made,' he told last week's London conference. 'So the trust has gone and the incentives (to take part) are gone.' Such clawbacks seem to be happening in many parts of the country, he said."

David Jenner is, or at least was, one of the enthusiasts for PBC. If he’s giving up on it…

2. Choose and Book is the great success of the National Programme for IT according to health minister Ben Bradshaw, and to CfH at their conference in Harrogate last month. Lib Dem MP Mark Hunter has a rather better understanding of the reality. As he says,

"In November when I asked the Minister to review the system in light of the many complaints received he replied that it was 'one of the great success stories of the national programme for IT'. If the Minister calls "choose and book" a success I'd hate to see what he considers to be a failure!"

3. The NHS Plan is coming to be seen as an utter failure as Dr Rant said recently. Now the delivery of the APPG report is awaited. There's a summary of the evidence it received here. How will Dr Stoate allow his party to weasel their way out of their failures? Just how much “tweaking” will be necessary? As much tweaking as CfH will need if it is to avoid being ditched by the Tories?

4. You just cannot get Chief Execs for acute trusts these days can you? To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose one CEO is bad enough, to lose two is careless. And to lose more than that is systematic failure of the kind only this government can manage. Dr Rant sympathises with Chief Execs- they get the blame for everything, and now they don’t even get a pay out.

Richard Vize at HSJ is trying to swing the blame pendulum back towards doctors and away from management. I can see why he’s trying this…but it rather illustrates that the culture in the NHS is not one of reflection and learning, but actually one of aggression, bullying, back stabbing and blame deflection.

5. Will Alan Johnson still be SOS for Health? Might he be called to a higher place? Of course, like the cabinet, we all still do have full confidence in Gordon Brown and his government. Mrs Blears the Labour’s Party’s problem is not that we don’t get the message- it’s that we hate the message, and most of the messengers, and we hate the fact that you think we’re dumb enough to accept your party’s combination of arrogance, mendacity and incompetence any longer.

Jobbing Doctor comments on the fin de siecle feel to current politics and Dr Rant is looking forward to the end of this particular government. Dr Rant hopes that Mr Lansley will be a high phosphate enema for the NHS getting rid of the policies and people who have failed it severely in the last twelve years.

Never has so much money been squandered by so many politicians and managers for so few health gains.