Report to the People
30th May 2005

Radical Response
That two men called Kerr agree with each other doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering political development.  But last week’s announcement by Health Minister, Andy Kerr, that he backs Professor David Kerr’s report on the future shape of the NHS signals a radical shift in Scottish health policy.

For a start, Prof Kerr proposes a framework for Scotland’s health service as a whole, marking the end of the failed board-by-board approach to service reorganisation which led to such disasters as Argyll and Clyde’s now discredited Clinical Strategy.

If it is to deliver the level of service we want and deserve, the NHS must modernise.  Where we are now, or where we were a few years ago, isn’t good enough.  Before the Health Board presented us with their Clinical Strategy almost a year ago to the day, I wasn’t exactly flooded with letters telling me our NHS was perfect.

In a fundamental departure, therefore, Prof Kerr wants to move away from the idea of the patient as a passive recipient of healthcare.  Patients’ interests - not those of doctors, or managers, or politicians - should be the starting point for service design, with more services delivered locally.

The raft of far-reaching reforms put forward by Prof Kerr will be examined in detail in the coming months.  What is already clear, though, is that his report gives us a range of options.  When presented with the Acute Strategy last year, we had only two - like it or lump it.

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