NHS Bill and children

[childrensdocmum]

As a mother and also a paediatrician, I am very worried about the effects the NHS Bill will have on children's health and health care. This Bill spells the end of the NHS as we know it. It's not that there aren't problems with the NHS for children - but this Bill will make things worse. Worse for children with serious and life-threatening illnesses, worse for children with chronic conditions and disabilities, worse for children with problems that are expensive and difficult to fix.

I wonder - what do other mumsnet mothers think about the NHS Bill?

Are you going to expand on your reasons for thinking that? Its easy to post that its going to create problems which will certainly make parents start to panic but why do you think that?

Most people know very little about it rather than what is in the media - which is often even more biased than your post!

One of the reasons for writing in mumsnet is because I can't understand why the media haven't woken up to what's going on!

Here are some of the reasons I am worried about the NHS Bill:

1. children's services are notoriously un-profitable. Especially services for children with chronic illnesses. The most profitable health services are planned operations, like cataracts and hip replacements. Children have very few planned procedures like these. The Bill makes more of a market out of the NHS, and unprofitable services like those for children will suffer. New commissioning groups will be able to refuse to offer services that they think are too expensive. This will increase the post-code lottery problems that already exist.
2. There is no requirement for GPs to accept patients on to their lists (now PCTs have an obligation to find a GP for a patient - that will be removed). So if there are children with really expensive problems, they may find it difficult or impossible to register with a GP at all
3. Public health doctors will be moved out of the NHS into local authorities - this is good in some ways, but bad in others. Public health doctors are the ones who have the skills to figure out what a whole group of children in particular area, for example, need from health services. The new system has no clear means for figuring out what local health needs are - they say GPs know their patients, but health services need to be planned carefully in order to get it right. These are not skills that GPs have now. Most GPs say they don't know how to do these things (commissioning) and don't want to either. RIght now the situation is far from perfect, but the solution would be to train public health docs specifically in child health, and then place them at the heart of the NHS - not one step removed in PCTs, or even further in local authorities.
4. Competition between different services is unhelpful in trying to improve on the badly coordinated care that children with chronic illnesses like asthma or epilepsy or diabetes get now. We need people to work together in the interests of children and families, not competing with eachother, unable to plan services together, unable to disclose information to eachother (look at what's happening with the silicone implants scandal - this is directly related to the involvement of private healthcare in the NHS). Yes we need to improve the quality of care, but competition works in industries like clothing or food, not in healthcare where the whole system is hugely complicated and where working together and cooperating is essential
5. child protection - coordination and working together is essential to protect children from harm. Imagine what it'd be like when there are "any qualified providers" in the NHS, none of them talking to eachother because they are competing. How will anyone stop children like Baby P falling through the net?

Is there no way to try and get the media to take more interest? In general they like the NHS, like children and are suspicious of the government so surely you could elicit some interest? I'm very concerned about NHS services being eroded and inappropriate business paradigms being imposed. If I could help you I would :(

Thank you. Please help me spread the message - friends, family, and so on. I'm keen to alert the media too. All suggestions welcome!

children'sdocmum - would you consider writing some of your concerns in a blog post for the Too Many Cuts blog? It was started by a group of Mumsnetters and is trying to draw attention to the real effects of the cuts/changes on ordinary people.

If it were set out in a blog then you could get people to link from Twitter and Facebook - that'd be a start

If you are interested, you can find the Frothers (Mumsnetters who started the Too Many Cuts blog) on this thread

OP please come froth with the frothers. They have a blog, are on twitter and a facebook page. It's all about trying to highlight the damage this coalition is inflicting on the most vulnerable in society. Most of the media have their own agenda and won't cover it.

I think lots of the points are hard to get across and I think that the media have lost interest. The Bill spells the biggest change to the NHS despite Cameron promising to leave it alone! One thing you can do is to sign this e-petition:
epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670

maybe we could see about getting this onto the mumsnet website - what do you think? and yes will take a look at the frothers site too