Election views: Health
Continuing the series of election specials, ePolitix.com analyses the main parties' manifesto pledges on health, and asks key stakeholders to comment.
Labour
Labour’s manifesto commits to improving on the work already done in the NHS, increasing investment and slashing waiting times further, including so-called ‘hidden’ waits for diagnostic tests.
Patients will be given a choice of primary care provider, as well as choice in how they use a budget for their own social care.
Greater action will be taken on MRSA and more funding will go on palliative care to improve cancer services.
Public health will also play a key role, with Labour pledging to hold consultations on a smoking ban as well as establishing a system of food labelling to provide guidance on healthy eating.
Conservatives
The Conservatives have also focused on choice in their manifesto health commitments, but instead the choice is between private and state healthcare, offering to pay half the cost of private healthcare if patients opt to do so.
Organisation of the NHS is to be scaled back, with targets to be scrapped, administrative bodies such as primary care trusts to be merged and axed, to allow more local control, with all hospitals being made foundation hospitals.
Sexually transmitted infections are a high priority for the Conservatives, as they have promised to launch a tough campaign, similar to the HIV/Aids campaigns of the 1980s.
Lib Dems
The Liberal Democrats have pledged an extra £8b for healthcare.
With free personal care, eye tests, dental checks and more prescription medicines among their commitments, it is not difficult to see why they have called for such a high figure.
The Liberal Democrats have also promised to cut the number of civil servants and increase the number of doctors and nurses.
Centrally-imposed targets are to be scrapped and a ban on smoking in public places is one of the Liberal Democrats’ top priorities.
Stakeholder Response: The NHS Confederation
The NHS Confederation laid out its aims for the next parliament in its manifesto. It is calling on the next government to:
"1. Stop using NHS management and staff as a political football in the run-up to the election.
2. Involve NHS staff in policymaking and the future development of the health service.
3. ‘Choice’ must not merely be about where and when you have an operation, but must be extended to long-term patients too. This could be done by giving patients vouchers to decide the provider and the nature of their care.
4. Adequate resources and IT infrastructure to provide long-term care plans to all patients.
5. More integration and common budgeting between primary, secondary and social care.
6. Set up a separate fund specifically for investment to improve the nation’s health, to stop the resources for long-term plans being squeezed by the need to run day-to-day health services."
To view the NHS Confederation's manifesto in full please click here.
Stakeholder Response: Depression
A spokesperson for Depression Alliance told ePolitix.com: "In 1999 Tony Blair told us that 'we have to combat the key killers in our country – cancer, heart disease and stroke, accidents and mental illness' (Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation) and yet in 2005 we are witnessing the same paucity of mental health service provision as then.
"True, through the choice agenda there has been a philosophical move towards individually appropriate care, however the capacity of the NHS to deliver choice is markedly decreased by the under-investment in a wide range of community, statutory and voluntary sector activities.
"Depression remains the poor relation on the mental health agenda and the closure and potential closure of vital, valued services continues unabated."
Stakeholder Response: The Stroke Association
Stroke is the third biggest killer in the
But you could be forgiven for not knowing that - awareness, research and prioritisation of stroke is lagging dangerously behind the other big killers: cancer and heart disease. For every £1 spent on stroke research, £20 is spent on Heart Disease and £50 is spent on Cancer . For every 90 stroke physicians in the
There have been developments in stroke care in recent years, which The Stroke Association applauds, but progress is much too slow and there is a desperate need for greater investment in stroke services. Strokes and TIAs are continually being misdiagnosed and ignored; dedicated health professionals are having to decide between stroke unit beds or brain scanners when they need both; and life changing rehabilitation is sparse if present at all.
With more investment in organisational change the costs to the nation would be reduced:
-
Major investment in stroke prevention - Sustained health awareness campaigns could significantly reduce the incidence of stroke.
-
Investment to guarantee that stroke is always treated as a medical emergency as is a Heart Attack - Early intervention and treatment by specialists can improve outcomes for all people who have had a stroke, lessening the severity of disability.
-
Investment in hospitals - A properly funded, staffed and equipped stroke unit in every hospital would lead to better outcomes for patients and a reduction in the length of time people stay in hospital, freeing up beds and resources.
-
Investment in care - Access to rehabilitation support, including occupational and speech therapy and physiotherapy, can make all the difference to people's ability to rebuild their lives. Access to rehabilitation also speeds up discharge from hospital.
To view the Stroke Association's manifesto click here.
Stakeholder Response:The Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians manifesto calls on the next UK Government to implement policies in four key areas: improving the health of individuals; developing the best care for patients; improving the working lives of doctors; and restoring academic medicine.
Their main priorities are:
-
A ban on smoking in all public places and workplaces;
-
Funding for dedicated alcohol health workers;
-
A national strategy for tackling the threat from obesity;
-
A reduction in sexually transmitted diseases;
-
The promotion and strengthening of clinical leadership in the NHS;
-
Continued expansion of the medical workforce;
-
A new specialty of acute medicine;
-
Better coordination of services across primary and secondary care;
-
Closer involvement of the medical profession in standards and performance;
-
More professional training;
-
An increase in medical beds;
-
Greater support for flexible ways of working within hospitals;
-
Improved medical career structures;
-
A coherent strategy for the development of academic medicine in the
To view the RCP's priorities for the next government click here.
Stakeholder Response: The Insulin Dependent Diabetes Trust
The IDDT set out its challenges for the new government:
-
"People with diabetes should receive an informed choice of treatment including risks and benefits of all available treatment options and that the education programme for people with diabetes should be improved to take this requirement into account.
-
To protect public health, the information about treatment options provided to patients should be gained from independent high quality research. If such studies have not been carried out, then there should be a commitment by the Department of Health to commission these essential studies.
-
That there should be an undertaking that patients' views will carry equal weight in decision-making about their treatment and put in place education programmes for medical and healthcare professionals to ensure that patient choice is reality and not rhetoric.
-
In order to protect the health and quality of life of patients, the Department of Health should ensure that the NHS has more than one supplier of essential medicines such as natural animal insulin so that the commercial decisions of the pharmaceutical industry does not put health and even lives at risk.
-
That the implementation of the National Service Framework for Diabetes should receive ring-fenced central funding to ensure that the present and increasing inequalities in care and provision of medical needs are eradicated."
To access the IDDT's manifesto please click here.
Related Stakeholders
Related News
- Minister sets out NHS reform plans
- Johnson unveils nurses' funding boost
- Wales to abolish hospital parking charges
- Hospital infection deaths rising
- Welsh health standards criticised
Discuss this article via video now
