Will the NHS be left hanging (and could this be a good thing?)
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m a bit bleary-eyed today. Fuelled by the election hype (and a late night toast binge) I stayed up – pointlessly – until 2am, when only a handful of results had been called. By the time I staggered out of bed some time after 7am this morning, I had no idea what was going on. I still don’t to be honest. Is anyone in charge? Apparently Gordon’s asleep.
Anyway, the first interesting thing that I heard, on turning on the Beeb’s ‘breakfast election special’ was that all of our current health ministers had lost their seats, with the exception of boyish health secretary Andy Burnham. It seems that plain-speaking Mike O’Brien and top tweeting Gillian Merron are as much casualties of the 2010 Election as expenses scandal-tainted Ann Keen and Phil Hope. All change at the DoH.
However, without a Tory majority there will be no sudden sweeping into power for David Cameron and his health sidekick Andrew Lansley, so we may escape the renaming of the DH as the ‘DoPH’ for a while longer.
In fact, while MPs are squabbling and forming odd alliances, it looks like a lot of things will be left ‘hanging’, including the health service. Could this be a good thing?
Ongoing indecisiveness might wreck our economy but it could benefit the NHS, preventing a knee-jerk reaction from the party in ‘power’. New administrations tend to ‘reinvent the wheel’ just to show they are doing something and because they’re not really up to speed with what’s happening on the ground. The worst thing for the health service would be swift swingeing cuts; poorly thought through organisational change; or implementation of illogical, people-pleasing policies.
An enforced delay might prevent quick fix slashing and burning of services (or even management) to make short-term efficiency savings. Perspective can work wonders.
For example, I hope whoever is in power takes a careful look at the report of the Prime Minister’s Commission on the future of nursing and midwifery, a piece of work conducted and supported by a range of non-political stakeholders. Please don’t let the Tories simply chuck this in the bin because they didn’t commission it.
If politicians have to take stock and look at what’s really happening in the NHS they might just start looking at the health service from a long-term point of view. They all harp on about the need to take the politics out of health. Might a hung parliament be the one way to actually achieve this, at least temporarily?
