Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Simon Stevens won his extra NHS cash. Now for the hard bit

Simon Stevens won his extra NHS cash. Now for the hard bit The NHS boss used all his powers of persuasion to get George Osborne to hand over £3.8bn upfront next year. But can he deliver on transforming care?

So, well played, Simon Stevens. Spectacularly well played, in fact. To have somehow got George Osborne to stump up £3.8bn extra for the NHS next year, at a time when the cash-strapped chancellor had to fix his tax credits problem, as well as finding extra money for security and counter-terrorism, demonstrates that NHS England’s chief executive has persuasive skills of a very high order. To have won the argument, that a sizeable chunk of the extra £8bn ministers had pledged to deliver by 2020 had to come next year, is a real coup. Until as recently as Monday, most NHS leaders were pessimistically saying that the Treasury was being inflexible and remained very unpersuaded of the need for a significant upfront downpayment of the £8bn. Stevens’s refusal to accept Osborne’s preference, to phase in the £8bn over time in equal amounts, shows real backbone and an admirable certainty of purpose. Continue reading... The Guardian

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