Having worked hard to influence health minister Professor Lord Darzi's wide-ranging review of the NHS (the NHS Next Stage Review), our top priority for the immediate period is to ensure its implementation delivers real and sustainable benefits for patients, the public and NHS staff.
Other priorities for 2008/09 include:
In response to a survey of our members and discussions at membership meetings, we will focus on supporting members with their local reputation while continuing to address national reputation issues through our media and political work.
2008 is the 60th anniversary of the NHS. Therefore, the theme of our annual conference is Delivering the future today to create a debate on some of the major future challenges facing the NHS. In the run up to the conference we are producing a series of debate papers on funding social care, compassion, globalisation and expectations, innovation and top ups.
We will be working with all parties to ensure that their proposed policies on health are sensible, workable and in the best interests of patients, the public and staff, and producing our own manifesto.
We will be developing our position on the key issues and helping our members to make sense of the new proposals.
We will continue work with our members to influence the Government's health inequalities strategy. We will also provide a briefing to help our members make sense of the findings from the work of the national support team with spearhead authorities.
We are developing work on opportunities for vertical integration, starting with a seminar with the Department of Health.
We will build on the arguments in our debate paper on compassion, taking this work forward working in partnership with key organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing.
We will continue to influence the future regulatory and registration regime to be operated by the Care Quality Commission, as well as the process of setting improvements standards.
We are identifying member views and responding to the informatics review.
We will continue to work with the range of national organisations involved in this agenda to shape their work and ensure members have a voice. For example, we are working with the Department of Health on a briefing for boards on their responsibilities around healthcare associated infection. We will continue to work with the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) to develop the National Learning and Reporting System (NLRS) and promote shared learning.
Our work on this will focus on exploring the contributions of planning versus markets for the allocation of capital into the system.
We will be working to ensure that solutions for funding social care do not adversely impact on our members and that any change will facilitate joint-working and the integration of services.
We are developing new services to give members the latest intelligence, policy and political insight and make sense of the health policy and political agenda.
Public confidence
The NHS is facing increasing public criticism in terms of delivery, value for money and financial management. The impact of this criticism on patient care is a cause of great concern.
The NHS Next Stage Review
Prof Lord Ara Darzi has been charged with carrying out a wide-ranging review of the NHS and published his interim report on 4 October. The core of his vision for the next stage of reform is not about changing funding or structure, he sees the focus of reform in two ways:
JMCC and The NHS Confederation
For some time clinicians have been unhappy about some of the Government's NHS reforms, and that they have been insufficiently involved in them. In 2006 The NHS Confederation began a project with the Joint Consultants Committee (now the Joint Medical Consultative Council, the JMCC) to ask doctors what it would be like to practise in a reformed NHS,
Last reviewed 4 Jul 2008