04 Oct 2007
Commenting on the report, Dr Gill Morgan, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents 95% of NHS organisations, said:
"To date, staff and the public have not had a compelling story setting out the need for change and this has resulted in their increasing levels of disengagement.
"We welcome Lord Darzi's desire to redress this and yesterday the NHS Confederation and the Joint Medical Consultative Council launched a report setting out our vision for what a clinically engaged workforce would look like.
"Lord Darzi's review must leave a lasting legacy of a new way of working and not be a one-off exercise. The critical test will be how widely local people are engaged and whether the process is sensitive to different local situations - there can be no national blueprint directing things in the background.
"In terms of the specifics, we also welcome the implementation of a health innovation council. It is crucial to encourage those who want to innovate to do so and it is right that this initiative is led by a minister. Similar schemes have been tried in the past and we expect the council to learn from and build on what has gone before.
"Surveys show us that although a majority of people are satisfied with the service that they are provided with by their GPs, 14% of them are unhappy with opening hours. This represents around 5 million people. A modern, patient focused NHS must explore ways to resolve this issue. The GP contract, as it stands, is a vital tool in opening up access to healthcare. I am sure our members will be keen to explore ways of providing more flexible services to patients.
"In under-doctored areas, we must make sure that measures to improve services are not simply spent on providing more doctors - we need a whole range of measures to be put in place. Our recent report on health inequalities, for example, was clear that we must find the missing patients who have not registered with health services and live in some of the most deprived parts of our country. From this point, we can begin to reaffirm the core value of fairness at the heart of our NHS.
The NHS Confederation represents more than 95% of the organisations that make up the NHS. Its members include the majority of NHS acute trusts, ambulance trusts, foundation trusts, mental health trusts, primary care trusts, special health authorities and strategic health authorities in England; trusts and local health boards in Wales; and health and social service trusts and boards in Northern Ireland.
The Joint Medical Consultative Council (previously the Joint Consultants Committee) brings together the organisations that represent the medical profession in the UK. Membership includes the presidents of all of the medical royal colleges, the chairmen of each of the craft committees of the British Medical Association, the Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans and the Medical Schools Council. The Council debates, provides advice and takes action upon issues that affect the practice of medicine and the delivery of health care in the UK, with the aim of promoting improvements in quality, safety and effective use of resources.
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Last reviewed 8 Oct 2007