Nurses for Reform Blog

Following the success of papers I have written for organisations such as The Heritage Foundation, I have recently been asked to write a new paper for the Hoover Institution.

The Hoover Institution is one of the United States most prestigious academic think tanks and closely affiliated to Stanford University.  The institution greatly influences public policy development globally  with its ongoing research agenda and I am very honoured to be asked to write for them.

This article clearly demonstrates that the UKs parents and indeed many teachers, do not believe that the state is providing the education that they want for their children.  The demand to be allowed to set up free schools has been far greater than expected.

NFR believes that the Coalition Government should not just stop at schools, hospitals should be next in line.  As I have written before, local planning laws must be changed to allow much greater diversity of provision.  Hospitals could be set up for example by private companies, mutuals, charities, patient groups etc and they should also be able to take over failing NHS hospitals and to compete for care for and treat NHS patients.

I am delighted to be appointed as a Senior Fellow at the think tank Progressive Vision.   They have some very interesting things to say about healthcare and the NHS and I look forward to a long term collaboration with them.

In his first major interview since becoming Health Secretary Andrew Lansley sets out his plans for the NHS.  To me this is just more tinkering around the edges.  He talks about nurses spending more time with patients and reducing health care acquired infections, while these are laudable intentions it sounds like he is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The NHS does not need more or new targets.  Targets are part of the problem of this broken system.  What we must hear from Andrew Lansley is how is going to change the system itself.  We have had more than 60 years of trying to make the NHS work and it still failing patients every day.

I was at a party yesterday and got in to conversation with someone about the NHS and healthcare provision and funding in the UK.  What was most interesting was that, although they admitted that the NHS was a system that failed people, they still thought that the Government would be able to put things right.  The idea that given government has made such a mess of things should mean that it should stay out of healthcare in the future was not something that had been considered.

With stories such as this and this appearing daily in our press isn’t it time to give the market a chance to put things right?