In November the Department of Health published lists of services which “Any Qualified Provider” can bid for or offer to patients. This is to replace the unified integrated National Health Service as the “preferred provider”, which it has been for 63 years.
Patients will be given a choice as to who can provide them with the health care they need – “patient heal yourself”! No provider will be guaranteed a level of patient throughput.
These changes come in before the demise of the Primary Care Trusts, and before the General Practitioner Commission Groups are established – and even before the Health and Social Care Bill is enacted. They will introduce duplication, confusion and chaos, and waste precious NHS resources. Out of the chaos will come private monopoly, as has occurred with every privatisation in the past 25 years. ■