BMA seminar launches healthcare funding review
March 2002
Kicking off the BMA's healthcare funding review, broadcaster Nick Ross asked the audience if the relationship between healthcare and the NHS wasn't a bit like that between public service broadcasting and the BBC and asked for a show of hands on the question "What is the extent to which people consider the NHS to be the only model for delivering healthcare?"
"I could be seen as a pariah if I say the NHS is not the best way of doing things," Mr Ross, who chaired this week's seminar, said. "But not many French and Germans say they should pattern their healthcare services on the NHS." A slight majority of people taking part in the seminar was not convinced that the NHS was the only way of delivering healthcare either.
The debate which followed covered a wide range of issues - presenting a challenge for the steering group which is leading the review project. But BMA Council chairman Dr Ian Bogle fully expected this. "We have a lot of work to do," he said. "We will shortly be conducting an opinion poll and doing some extensive fact gathering. The steering group will come to understand better what is possible and what it will cost."
Issues raised during the debate:
- recognise patient choice rather than level accusations of greedy consumerism,
- consider the impact of technologies on service delivery, on health outcomes and on quality of life
- move the agenda from illness to health
- not all interventions/treatments offered under the NHS are appropriate
- look very seriously at alternatives to public funding
- consider surveying public opinion to discover what services the population want
- the running of the NHS has to be transparent
- debate how ethics and priority setting should be intertwined.
One point raised was the status of this review in the light of the government's Budget announcements to inject more money into the NHS now and to 2004 and to run its own review groups looking at five "areas of challenge" (partnership, performance, patient care, professional demarcation, prevention). When this was announced Dr Ian Bogle said "We are delighted that the Government has responded so quickly to our call for a fundamental review of NHS funding. The announcement today represents a substantial step in putting the NHS on a sound long-term funding basis."
Last night Dr Bogle said that the BMA-initiated funding review was taking the longer term view so continued to have relevance. It was also UK based, where the Prime Minister's review seemed to cover only England and Wales with spin offs to Scotland and Northern Ireland. "The Government should not see the BMA's review as a threatening exercise, but rather as a parallel initiative to its own modernisation programme," he said.