Peter Hill, associate director and solicitor at specialist law firm TPP Law, considers the potential impact on estate management of the substantial reforms proposed for the NHS under last Year’s White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”.
He argues that the key to ensuring that patients are offered the optimum care will be selecting wisely from a range of estate and asset management solutions tailored to local healthcare needs.
The White Paper “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”, published in July 2010, set out a new vision for the NHS. The White Paper heralded great reform, proposing to change radically the nature of decisionmaking for healthcare commissioning, turning it from “top-down” to “bottom-up”. The new National Health Service Act to implement the reforms is to pass through Parliament very soon. Against the backdrop of a huge public sector structural financial deficit, and the Coalition Government’s determination to impose swingeing cutbacks, the White Paper’s proposed changes “revolutionise NHS accountability”, and establish a “patient-led NHS”.1 The new bottom-up commissioning bodies for primary care will be general practitioner (GP) consortia, with the remaining services to be commissioned by a new NHS Commissioning Board. Due for full implementation in 2013, GP consortia are expected to commission the great majority of NHS services,2 including:
• Elective hospital care and rehabilitative care.
• Urgent and emergency care, including the out-of-hours service.
• Most community health services.
• Mental health services.
• Learning disability services
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