Jeremy Hunt must give full statement on kidney dialysis – and stop this vital service being devolved to local commissioning groups Statement from Dr Louise Irvine of the National Health Action Party on plans by NHS England to devolve kidney dialysis services to Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). (story here: https://uk.news.yahoo/mps-warn-kidney-dialysis-plan-122504080.html) “NHS England is embarking on a brief consultation over the Christmas period about plans to divest itself of responsibility for commissioning kidney dialysis services and hand this to local CCGs. Currently kidney dialysis is one of the “prescribed’ specialist services that is commissioned by NHS England. These are services that are highly specialised and have to be commissioned on a wider scale than other health services. For some reason NHS England has picked on dialysis as an area that it no longer wants to commission. The British Kidney Patient Association says there are great risks to this policy: 1. Dialysis is a highly specialised area and CCGs may not have the expertise to commission this service properly 2. Dialysis is closely linked with kidney transplantation services so splitting them up could lead to poor co-ordination between these services 3. CCGs are free to decide how much of a service to commission and could decide it is a lower priority. The level of service could vary around the country depending on CCG decisions leading to a postcode lottery In addition CCGs can outsource provision of services to private sector and so the transfer of dialysis commissioning to CCGs could be a first step towards privatisation of this service. This could lead to a fragmented and poorer quality service For all those reasons kidney dialysis should remain a specialised service commissioned by NHS England. We call on Jeremy Hunt to make a full statement on the matter in the Commons during Health Questions on Tuesday. He needs to clarify the plans for kidney dialysis – and if necessary stop this vital service from being devolved to local commissioning groups.”
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:31:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015