When Labour lost power in the 2010 general election, I said I’d take to the streets if
this Tory-led government tried to privatise the NHS and I did, campaigning for the
Drop the Bill campaign. But the Health and Social Care Act was voted through in
2012, with the Lib Dem support of their Tory masters in the Lords and Commons.
The Labour NHS pledge
Burnham speaks with great passion and conviction about the NHS and reforms to
bring about whole-person care, making the case for one budget and one system,
caring for the whole person. One Labour Party conference delegate in Brighton this
autumn evoked the memory of Beveridge and the setting-up of the welfare state
when she called for the Burnham Report, to herald a rebirth of the NHS. Burnham
wants to see council-led health and well-being boards commissioning all care, while
hospital trusts would become integrated providers of acute, mental and social care.
It now costs an estimated £4 million a week to keep people in hospital, because the
social care system has broken down and cannot support them in their homes. In an
era of an ageing society, the way older people are treated by both the NHS and the
social care system is more pertinent than ever. People in their late eighties and
nineties often have complex needs, integrating the three services for physical, mental
and social care makes sense. A first step should be the development of integrated
services in the NHS for long-term conditions, including people with dementia and
their carers.
“Hospitals are now permitted to earn up to half their income from
treating private patients, meaning longer waits for NHS patients”
Families report the need for better co-ordination of care – a single point of contact
for all of their parents’ needs for example – rather than the current disjointed
experience, which often involves no continuity of care-givers; having to repeat the
same information over and over again to various people who come through the door
as carers, with confusion for the individual needing care
revolutionise.it
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