The NHS - Coalition Agreement.

22. NHS
The Government believes that the NHS is an
important expression of our national values.
We are committed to an NHS that is free at the
point of use and available to everyone based on
need, not the ability to pay. We want to free
NHS staff from political micromanagement,
increase democratic participation in the NHS
and make the NHS more accountable to the
patients that it serves. That way we will drive up
standards, support professional responsibility,
deliver better value for money and create a
healthier nation.

• We will guarantee that health spending
increases in real terms in each year of the
Parliament, while recognising the impact this
decision will have on other departments.
• We will stop the top-down reorganisations
of the NHS that have got in the way of
patient care. We are committed to reducing
duplication and the resources spent on
administration, and diverting these resources
back to front-line care.
• We will significantly cut the number of health
quangos.
• We will cut the cost of NHS administration
by a third and transfer resources to support
doctors and nurses on the front line.
• We will stop the centrally dictated closure of
A&E and maternity wards, so that people have
better access to local services.
• We will strengthen the power of GPs as
patients’ expert guides through the health
system by enabling them to commission care
on their behalf.
• We will ensure that there is a stronger voice
for patients locally through directly elected
individuals on the boards of their local
primary care trust (PCT). The remainder
of the PCT’s board will be appointed by the
relevant local authority or authorities, and
the Chief Executive and principal officers will
be appointed by the Secretary of State on the
advice of the new independent NHS board.
This will ensure the right balance between
locally accountable individuals and technical
expertise.
• The local PCT will act as a champion for
patients and commission those residual
services that are best undertaken at a wider
level, rather than directly by GPs. It will also
take responsibility for improving public health
for people in their area, working closely
with the local authority and other local
organisations.
• If a local authority has concerns about a
significant proposed closure of local services,
for example an A&E department, it will have
the right to challenge health organisations,
and refer the case to the Independent
Reconfiguration Panel. The Panel would then
provide advice to the Secretary of State for
Health.
• We will give every patient the right to choose
to register with the GP they want, without
being restricted by where they live.
• We will develop a 24/7 urgent care service in
every area of England, including GP out-of-
hours services, and ensure every patient can
access a local GP. We will make care more
accessible by introducing a single number
for every kind of urgent care and by using
technology to help people communicate with
their doctors.
• We will renegotiate the GP contract and
incentivise ways of improving access to
primary care in disadvantaged areas.
• We will make the NHS work better by
extending best practice on improving
discharge from hospital, maximising the
number of day care operations, reducing
delays prior to operations, and where possible
enabling community access to care and
treatments.
• We will help elderly people live at home
for longer through solutions such as home
adaptations and community support
programmes.
• We will prioritise dementia research within
the health research and development budget.
The Coalition: our programme for government 25
• We will seek to stop foreign healthcare
professionals working in the NHS unless they
have passed robust language and competence
tests.
• Doctors and nurses need to be able to use
their professional judgement about what is
right for patients and we will support this by
giving front-line staff more control of their
working environment.
• We will strengthen the role of the Care
Quality Commission so it becomes an
effective quality inspectorate. We will develop
Monitor into an economic regulator that will
oversee aspects of access, competition and
price-setting in the NHS.
• We will establish an independent NHS
board to allocate resources and provide
commissioning guidelines.
• We will enable patients to rate hospitals and
doctors according to the quality of care they
received, and we will require hospitals to be
open about mistakes and always tell patients if
something has gone wrong.
• We will measure our success on the health
results that really matter – such as improving
cancer and stroke survival rates or reducing
hospital infections.
• We will publish detailed data about the
performance of healthcare providers online,
so everyone will know who is providing a
good service and who is falling behind.
• We will put patients in charge of making
decisions about their care, including control of
their health records.
• We will create a Cancer Drugs Fund to
enable patients to access the cancer drugs
their doctors think will help them, paid for
using money saved by the NHS through our
pledge to stop the rise in Employer National
Insurance contributions from April 2011.
• We will reform NICE and move to a system
of value-based pricing, so that all patients can
access the drugs and treatments their doctors
think they need.
26 The Coalition: our programme for government
• We will introduce a new dentistry contract
that will focus on achieving good dental health
and increasing access to NHS dentistry, with
an additional focus on the oral health of
schoolchildren.
• We will provide £10 million a year beyond
2011 from within the budget of the
Department of Health to support children’s
hospices in their vital work. And so that
proper support for the most sick children
and adults can continue in the setting of their
choice, we will introduce a new per-patient
funding system for all hospices and providers
of palliative care.
• We will encourage NHS organisations to
work better with their local police forces to
clamp down on anyone who is aggressive and
abusive to staff.
• We are committed to the continuous
improvement of the quality of services to
patients, and to achieving this through much
greater involvement of independent and
voluntary providers.
• We will give every patient the power
to choose any healthcare provider that
meets NHS standards, within NHS prices.
This includes independent, voluntary and
community sector providers.