London's healthcare services—again

BMJ 1997;315:140 (19 July)

Editorials

London's healthcare services—again

Some good ideas, but implementation needs political skill and government commitment

Could there possibly be anything more to say about London'shealth services? First, we had the report of the first King'sFund Commission on London, London Health Care 2010,¹ then theTomlinson report,² and then the government's white paper, MakingLondon Better,³ which established the London Initiative Groupand the London Initiative Zone for primary care development.All the reports stressed the need to improve primary care, especiallythe quality of general practice, the importance of rationalisingand reconfiguring acute hospital services, and the need to reshapemedical education and research to shift the focus of servicestowards community based rehabilitation and continuing care.

Huge efforts have been made in the past five years, but thereis considerable scepticism that much has really changed. Plansto reconfigure acute hospital services have been stalled by localand political opposition and delays in agreeing funding throughthe private finance initiative. . . . [Full text of this article]

Not only what to do, but how
Financial incentives, legislation, and budgetary reform

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?