RCN highlights continued concerns regarding Health and Social Care Bill
Published: 10 October 2011
The Royal College of Nursing has warned that the Health and Social Care Bill could have a serious and detrimental impact upon the NHS and the delivery of patient care, ahead of its second reading in the House of Lords tomorrow (11 October).
In its briefing to Parliamentarians, the RCN sets out a series of concerns and seeks a number of amendments to the Bill. In particular, the RCN believes there is a need to:
• Safeguard the quality of care and patient safety by introducing mandatory staffing levels and regulation of all healthcare workers;
• Provide local and national tariffs which will allow for comprehensive, high quality care pathways and patient experience;
• Resist moves to remove the private patient income cap from NHS providers to the detriment of NHS patients;
• Provide a service which promotes integration and collaboration between service providers, not fragmentation and an exacerbation of health inequalities; and
• Respect nationally agreed pay, pensions, terms and conditions and resist any moves towards pay bargaining;
RCN Executive Director of Nursing and Service Delivery Janet Davies said: “These reforms have the potential to destabilise NHS services by unfairly gearing the market towards private providers and preventing integration of services. Despite changes to the Bill and other reforms, we still believe competition is encouraged to such an extent that quality and patient care will suffer as providers’ contracts are awarded on cost, not quality of services.
“It is vital to avoid a situation where existing NHS providers will be left only to deliver critical services, which are the most expensive and challenging services to deliver. Checks and balances are needed to safeguard against the effects of competition.”
In particular, the RCN is calling for mandated staffing ratios of registered to non-registered nursing staff and a staffing level benchmark for how many patients a registered nurse should take responsibility. There is clear evidence that patient safety falls where nurses are responsible for too many patients. The RCN is also seeking to amend the Bill to provide for a mandatory register for healthcare assistants and assistant practitioners.
Janet Davies added:
“While we acknowledge that the Government has listened to our members in a number of areas, we remain concerned about where the reforms leave a health service already facing unprecedented financial challenge. The drive to find efficiency savings of £20 billion over the next four years in England is already having an increasingly negative effect on services and staff and we know more than 40,000 NHS posts are earmarked to be lost.
“We remain unconvinced that the policies set out in the Bill will deliver on their underlying principles of placing patients at the centre of care, reducing inefficiency in the NHS and improving standards across all aspects of the health service.”
Ends
Notes for Editors
The full briefing for Parliamentarians can be read here: http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/408291/Royal_College_of_Nursing_-_House_of_Lords_2nd_Reading_Briefing.pdf
For further information, interviews or illustrations please contact the RCN Media Office on 0207 647 3633, press.office@rcn.org.uk or visit http://www.rcn.org.uk/newsevents/media
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is the voice of nursing across the UK and is the largest professional union of nursing staff in the world. The RCN promotes the interest of nurses and patients on a wide range of issues and helps shape healthcare policy by working closely with the UK Government and other national and international institutions, trade unions, professional bodies and voluntary organisations.