Jeremy Hunt promises to change NHS culture with new focus on older people:
Hunt says he will improve dementia care and presents himself as NHS-friendly Tory at Conservative party conference
Jeremy Hunt has promised to "transform the culture" of the NHS, making it "the best in the world at looking after older people" in his first speech as health secretary to the Tory party conference.
In a speech where Hunt repeatedly used his own family experience to burnish his credentials as an NHS-friendly Tory, he said: "To my children born on the NHS. To my father who worked as a manager for the NHS and my mother who worked as an A&E nurse and midwife."
In fact his father, Admiral Sir Nicholas John Streynsham Hunt, was Commander-in-Chief Fleet before entering the private sector. In 1990 he became chairman of the South West Surrey district health authority and left to join the private company Nuffield Hospitals as chairman in 1996.
The health secretary made it clear that the elderly, a key set of voters, would be the focus of his stewardship of the NHS – pointing out that "this year for the first time there are more pensioners than children".
He said the Royal College of Physicians had noted that the health system "continues to treat older patients as a surprise … or unwelcome at worst".
Hunt outlined a series of tough measures to deal with this. The first was that managers could lose their jobs in the NHS – and that he would ask the Care Quality Commission to see how they could be held accountable "for the care they provide".
Although research for the Department of Health has raised doubts about use of the so-called "friends and family" test as a reliable indicator of patient experience, Hunt said he would press ahead and ensure all hospitals would be assessed using such surveys.
In a sign that Hunt will be more pliable to demands by Downing Street, he said he would expect a "big change in the way we look after people with dementia", a policy Andrew Lansley had resisted because it smacked of a top-down, target-driven approach to health that he had sought to overturn.
"By the next election we will be among the best in Europe at dealing with this most challenging of conditions," said Hunt.
The new health secretary also continued to criticise the NHS for falling behind the rest of Europe in clinical outcomes. "If our mortality rates for the five major killer diseases were as good as the best in Europe, we would save 20,000 lives a year," he said.
Hunt also attacked his Labour shadow, Andy Burnham, who as health secretary had begun the process of privatising hospitals, allowing them to set local pay, and had proposed cutting the NHS budget – all of which he now opposed. "First rule of opposition, Andy: criticise what the new lot do, not what you did yourself."
The Guardian
Jeremy Hunt has promised to "transform the culture" of the NHS, making it "the best in the world at looking after older people" in his first speech as health secretary to the Tory party conference.
In a speech where Hunt repeatedly used his own family experience to burnish his credentials as an NHS-friendly Tory, he said: "To my children born on the NHS. To my father who worked as a manager for the NHS and my mother who worked as an A&E nurse and midwife."
In fact his father, Admiral Sir Nicholas John Streynsham Hunt, was Commander-in-Chief Fleet before entering the private sector. In 1990 he became chairman of the South West Surrey district health authority and left to join the private company Nuffield Hospitals as chairman in 1996.
The health secretary made it clear that the elderly, a key set of voters, would be the focus of his stewardship of the NHS – pointing out that "this year for the first time there are more pensioners than children".
He said the Royal College of Physicians had noted that the health system "continues to treat older patients as a surprise … or unwelcome at worst".
Hunt outlined a series of tough measures to deal with this. The first was that managers could lose their jobs in the NHS – and that he would ask the Care Quality Commission to see how they could be held accountable "for the care they provide".
Although research for the Department of Health has raised doubts about use of the so-called "friends and family" test as a reliable indicator of patient experience, Hunt said he would press ahead and ensure all hospitals would be assessed using such surveys.
In a sign that Hunt will be more pliable to demands by Downing Street, he said he would expect a "big change in the way we look after people with dementia", a policy Andrew Lansley had resisted because it smacked of a top-down, target-driven approach to health that he had sought to overturn.
"By the next election we will be among the best in Europe at dealing with this most challenging of conditions," said Hunt.
The new health secretary also continued to criticise the NHS for falling behind the rest of Europe in clinical outcomes. "If our mortality rates for the five major killer diseases were as good as the best in Europe, we would save 20,000 lives a year," he said.
Hunt also attacked his Labour shadow, Andy Burnham, who as health secretary had begun the process of privatising hospitals, allowing them to set local pay, and had proposed cutting the NHS budget – all of which he now opposed. "First rule of opposition, Andy: criticise what the new lot do, not what you did yourself."
The Guardian
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