From: Chris Bradley, Bradford District Care Trust
Topic: NHS targets

60 new targets; not bad from the Government that was elected on a promise of no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS. I don’t usually make predictions but this one is too tempting.

Whether the targets achieve anything will be the subject of much debate when the time comes. The two sides are likely to divide along the lines of whether any improvements are a result of the targets or despite them. Some past targets of course were achieved before they were set and others were achievable by doing nothing as the trend was set toward it by current practice.

Massive amounts of money are spent devising these plans, or looking at ways to improve; huge pieces of work like the Wanless report that highlighted the financial (what else from a banker?) value of prevention rather than cure, unusually full of common sense but conveniently watered down when short-term financial targets are threatened.

Locally we have recently lost enough  people from the public health sectors of our organisation (by redundancy and internal maneuvers) to be in no doubt that yet another expensive report is finally shelved when it becomes inconvenient or fails to meet central short-term targets.

Every time I see further interference from non-clinically focused management and Government, neither of whom seem grounded in the realities of providing services according to need rather than to meet short-term goals, stay within budgets or satisfy party politics, we cringe yet again as the focus moves ever further from the patients as real people – and makes them units of cost.