Can Doctors Manage Patients’ Health Care Money?
This is being called the biggest revolution in the NHS since its foundation 60 years ago:
The plan, contained in a white paper to be published next week, is designed to place key decisions about how patients are cared for in the hands of doctors who know them. … About £80billion will be distributed to family [general practitioners] (GPs) in a move that will see strategic health authorities and primary care trusts scrapped. …Tens of thousands of administrative jobs in the health service will be lost as a result.
Full article on NHS giving GPs sole responsibility over front-line care to patients.
I like the part about the administrators going away. Not sure about the rest.
The NHS still doesn’t get it. Putting funds in the hands of doctors will not be as effective as putting funds in the hands of patients. In the United States, third-party payment means doctors can get reimbursed for most of what they recommend. Patients willingly seek unnecessary care because it costs them just pennies on the dollar. I don’t see how the new NHS plan is much different.
I too like that it cuts down on adminstrators. That’s probably a big political hurdle.
However, the quality of the program is highly correlated to the physican’s ability to budget. That seems like quite a big load for physicians.
This plan cuts down on “administrators” by making physicians administrators. Sounds a lot like Kaiser-Permanente.
I listened to the whole speech. At about 6 minutes, he states a goal of making the NHS the “largest social-enterprise network in the world.” Yikes!
The proposal’s title is “Liberating the NHS,” but as Devon Herrick suggests, a better title would be “Liberating the Patients.”
I expect very little of this high-sounding plan will come about. It is not really credible that the Health Minister of a government formed by the two parties, neither of which could win a majority in the last election, sitting in a Hung Parliament, can impose his will on the thousands of administrators whom he plans to fire, and the unions that have represented them for decades.
I’m skeptical. Doctors typically don’t make good managers.