Brown hails NHS reform plan

NHS reform plans provide a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to make it one of the world's best health systems, Gordon Brown has said.

The prime minister hailed health minister and surgeon Lord Darzi's major review of the service as a "bold vision" which would require serious commitment from the government to realise.

It will include moves to speed up approval of new drugs in a bid to end the "postcode lottery" of care provision as part of the first NHS "constitution".

Personal budgets for thousands of patients with long-term conditions such as multiple sclerosis and ratings for nurses according to the level of care and empathy will also feature.

It is also expected to include plans to make hospitals publish death rates for dozens of conditions to inform patient choices of where to go for treatment.

Health secretary Alan Johnson ordered the review a year ago, promising an "unprecedented" consultation with staff and patients to ensure previous mistakes of introducing reforms without getting them on side were not repeated.

In his foreword to the report Brown wrote that the latest proposals would have "an even more profound effect" than previous shake-ups.

He said: "If the challenge ten years ago was capacity, the challenge today is to drive improvements in the quality of care. We need a more personalised NHS, responsive to each of us as individuals, focused on prevention, better equipped to keep us healthy and capable of giving us real control and real choices over our care and our lives.

"Lord Darzi's report is a tremendous opportunity to build an NHS which provides truly world class services for all. It requires government to be serious about reform, committed to trusting front-line staff and ready to invest in new services and new ways of delivering services.

"It is a bold vision for an NHS, which is among the best healthcare systems in the world - a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we owe it to ourselves and our families to take."

The NHS was one of the government's very highest priorities, "and we will rise to the challenge you have set us", he added.

'Turning point'

In a statement to the Commons, Johnson said: "This is a momentous point in the history of the NHS.

"As we approach the 60th anniversary of our health service, it is striking how its founding principles still endure and have resonance for staff, patients and public alike.

"The content of the constitution was not dreamt up by me or civil servants in Whitehall. It is something that has arisen out of discussions with thousands of NHS staff and patients across the country.

"What we have come up with is not set in stone but is a good basis for further consultation. I think it strikes the right balance between the need for clarity and avoiding undue litigation, between the need to state what is enduring while ensuring the NHS has the flexibility to change and keep pace with rising expectations and medical advances.

"As the draft constitution states at the outset, the NHS belongs to the people. I would therefore urge everyone with an interest in preserving what's best about the NHS, as well as ensuring that it is fit for the future, to participate in the consultation and tell us what they think."

He told MPs that for patients, the constitution collects together important rights around access to drugs and treatments, health services, information, quality of care and environment, dignity and respect and complaint and redress.

'Commitment'

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: "David Cameron's unambiguous commitment to the National Health Service means a great deal to the public.

"They know that the NHS needs reform and that Labour have failed them on this crucial issue. But they also know that Conservative reforms for health care will not threaten the security that comes with a health service available to all, based on need."

Lord Darzi issued assurances last month that any changes would benefit patients and be based on clinical evidence and that existing services would not be withdrawn before "new and better" services replaced them.

The consultation, involving 60,000 people, had shown "patients, the public and NHS staff are not opposed to change in principle but want to ensure it is done to save lives and improve quality and is not driven by cost or politics", he said.

His recommendations on the introduction of so-called polyclinics have met with hostility from doctors' leaders and opposition parties amid claims they could force the closure of hundreds of GP surgeries without any local consultation.