Government to scrap Primary Care Trusts in major NHS shake-up
Jul 12 2010 By Jonathan Walker
Health trusts employing more than 2,000 people in Birmingham are to be scrapped in the biggest NHS shake up in history.
Doctors will work together to commission treatment for patients directly, under radical plans published by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary.
They will be handed much of the multi-million-pound budget currently handled by NHS trusts called Primary Care Trusts, which are to be abolished along with strategic health authorities.
An independent NHS Commissioning Board will oversee the new regime, with local councils taking over responsibility for public health.
Under plans set out in a White Paper, the Government also promised to scrap “top-down” targets in favour of a regime based on clinical outcomes.
And patients will be handed more choice over how and where they are treated.
The document said NHS management costs would be slashed by 45 per cent over four years and that NHS job losses were “inevitable”.
But Mr Lansley said it was vital to switch cash from bureaucracy into frontline services.
He said: “The sick must not pay for the debt crisis left by the previous administration. But the NHS is a priority for reform, too.
“Investment has not been matched by reform. So we will reform the NHS to use those resources more effectively for the benefit of patients.”
Birmingham’s primary care trusts include Birmingham East & North PCT, which employs 668 clerical, administrative and support staff. The figure includes clinical support staff, who provide technical support to doctors and work closely with them, but not doctors, nurses or other medical staff.
Heart of Birmingham Teaching PCT employs 377 and South Birmingham PCT employs 654, while West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, based in Edgbaston, employs 339.
The new GP co-operatives are likely to take on some of the workers affected as they will require administrators and clerical staff as well as technicians.
GPs will be directly responsible for commissioning the “great majority” of NHS services for their patients.
All NHS hospital trusts will become Foundation Trusts, giving more freedom from Whitehall control.
Mr Lansley also said he wanted to open up the NHS to private sector able to meet standards in what he said would be the “largest social enterprise sector in the world”.
MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) condemned the plans, saying: “This is an attempt to break up the NHS as we know it.”
