BLUEPRINT TO SAVE THE NHS
Dramatic drive to cut costs unveiled GPs ordered to crack down on health tourists Doling out of painkillers to be scrapped
EVERYDAY painkillers, gluten-free food and cough remedies will no longer be doled out on the NHS.
GPs will have to stop prescribing items that can be bought cheaply in supermarkets and chemists. Unveiling a major cost-cutting plan in the Daily Mail today, the head of the NHS says patients will also be expected to pay for their own indigestion pills, hayfever remedies and sun cream.
Simon Stevens says that free travel vaccinations will come to an end.
His new national guidance will say these should no longer be ‘routinely’ prescribed on the NHS. There will also be a big drive to recover the costs of treating European Union citizens.
The crackdown is part of a blueprint to be formally announced by Mr Stevens later this week to save the Health Service up to £1billion in two years. He wants to use the savings to improve patient care and pay for lifesaving drugs. The reforms come as the NHS struggles to keep pace with the pressures of both a growing and ageing
population. Following one of the worst winter crises in its 69- year history, doctors and MPs are calling for an urgent debate on funding, with suggestions including a special ‘NHS tax’.
But Mr Stevens today puts the emphasis on efficiency. His proposals include:
New health tourism rules for GPs to ensure they record all EU patients and enable the NHS to claw back money from their home countries;
Fresh bed- blocking targets for hospitals to free up a set number of beds currently occupied by elderly patients who should be at home;
Plans to ensure that NHS managers stop hiring expensive locum doctors who earn up to £200,000 a year.
In his interview today, Mr Stevens also suggests families can help take the pressure off the NHS by watching their children’s diets more closely and by ensuring their elderly relatives do not become isolated.
He suggests that parents should give their children carrots and apples when they get home from school rather than chocolate or cereal bars to help tackle childhood obesity.
The NHS is in the grip of a financial crisis exacerbated by having to foot the bill for increasingly expensive new drugs and operations for cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses which were previously incurable.
But Mr Stevens believes hundreds of millions of pounds could be saved by the NHS simply ‘getting its own house in order’ and reducing waste.
He estimates up to £400million could be saved a year by instructing GPs not to hand out ‘low priority’ items.
But his proposed clampdown will prove particularly controversial for the one in 100 Britons with coeliac disease – an intolerance to wheat. They will now have to pay from their own pockets for gluten-free food.
Mr Stevens says these products can now be bought in supermarkets and there is no longer a need for NHS prescriptions. And he says it is wrong for patients to be pre- scribed pizza bases, digestive biscuits and cakes.
His crackdown will also upset the one in ten patients eligible for free prescriptions – including the elderly, pregnant or those on low incomes.
Mr Stevens, who is chief executive of NHS England, says GPs hand out more than a billion prescriptions a year – a 50 per cent rise in a decade, costing £9.3billion.
But he says that the measures he unveils today will free up GP appointments as fewer patients need to book up slots to obtain a free prescription.
‘We’ve got to tackle some of the waste which is still in the system,’ he said. ‘The NHS is a very efficient health service but like every other country’s health service there is inefficiency and waste.
‘There’s £114million being spent on medicines for upset tummies, haemorrhoids, travel sickness, indigestion, that’s even before you get on to the £22million-plus on gluten-free that you can also now get at Morrisons, Lidl or Tesco.
‘We will be backing them in new national guidelines that say those should not routinely be prescribed on the NHS.
‘Part of what we are trying to do is make sure that we make enough headroom to spend money on the innovative new drugs by not wasting it on these kinds of items.
‘ The price of gluten- free alternatives has come down substantially.
‘There’s no doubt that coeliac disease is an important medical condition that’s increasingly being recognised. But when you look at the list of prescribable items it extends to digestive biscuits, pizzas and other products – there are legitimate questions to be answered.’
Mr Stevens will launch a consultation next month into new guidelines urging GPs to stop prescribing low priority items. This will start off by looking at ten groups of medicines or products including gluten-free foods, omega 3 vitamin supplements and travel vaccinations.
It will also include some very strong painkillers for terminally ill cancer patients which health experts say are expensive and not necessarily effective.
As part of the consultation, GPs, medical experts and patient groups will all have the chance to air their views – including representatives of coeliac disease sufferers.
Once that stage is finished, officials will launch a second consultation looking at other items including paracetamol, cough and cold remedies, hayfever pills, travel sickness tablets and sun cream.
The review was prompted by research by NHS Clinical Commissioners – a membership body for groups of GPs – which compiled a lengthy list of low priority items.
Several health trusts have already imposed their own bans within the past six months. Mr Stevens’ costsaving measures – the NHS Delivery Plan – will be formally announced on Friday.
‘Getting its house in order’
OF all the many examples of public sector waste, among the most egregious is the £88million a year the NHS spends doling out paracetamol – at up to twenty times its high street cost.
GPs in England wrote a staggering 22.9million prescriptions for this cheap, easily available painkiller in 2015, mainly for minor ailments such as colds and flu.
Yet while a box of 16 tablets can be bought for 19p in supermarkets, each prescription cost the taxpayer an average of £3.83.
At any time this would be scandalous. In the midst of a major funding crisis, it’s positively criminal.
And it’s the same profligate story for a range of common remedies which can be purchased at minimal expense; indigestion pills, ibuprofen, vitamin supplements. Together, they cost the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds.
But could it be that common sense is finally about to prevail? In an interview in today’s Mail, NHS chief Simon Stevens announces a crackdown on the routine prescribing of these everyday medicines.
He also has plans to claw back some of the estimated £300million annual cost of ‘health tourism’, help parents tackle the scourge of child obesity and bring together health and social care services to reduce the number of elderly patients stuck in hospital beds unnecessarily.
No doubt the Left will whine that making people pay for even the most basic medicines is privatisation by the back door. But Mr Stevens is simply recognising a harsh and inescapable reality.
The NHS – despite its great strengths – is creaking at the seams and its problems will not be solved by blithely pouring in more billions. Without radical reform this is a service in grave danger of collapse.