The Health and Care Bill: All you need to know

What is it? The Health and Care Bill is the first major piece of NHS legislation since the disastrous ‘Lansley Act’ of 2012. It focuses largely on the NHS in England and seeks to put into law the main elements of the government’s Integration and Innovation white paper, published earlier this year. Where has it come from? There has been widespread consensus across the NHS for several years about the damage being done to the service by the 2012 Act. It has forced decision makers to use competition when organising health services and has blocked joined-up working across the NHS. Since 2019 NHS England has been working on plans to change the law away from Lansley’s market madness. What structural changes will the Bill bring about? The Bill sets up a series of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to cover England. The ICSs will include an Integrated Care Board (ICB), the key element in the new system which will assume the commissioning responsibilities currently undertaken by clinical commissioning groups. There will also be an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP), a secondary part of the system intended to give a voice to the wider health and care community. Are there any positives in the Bill? The Bill contains some important measures that UNISON supports and has been championing for the past decade. These include plans to scrap the competition enforcement powers of health regulators and to get rid of the existing procurement system that insists on the use of competition....
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article health and social care health care Source Type: news