Is the purchaser–provider split dying?

Is the purchaser–provider split dying? Is the ‘purchaser–provider split’ dead? No. Is it dying? Quite possibly.

These questions are prompted by what is going on in the NHS right now and by the second annual lecture for NHS Providers, given by Sir David Nicholson last week.

Having largely kept silent since leaving NHS England Sir David re-appeared to tell the government, point blank, that it simply has to find more money for the NHS. No doubt about that.

He opened by saying that he would not be making any major policy pronouncements: ‘So I won’t be saying that the Department of Health should be abolished or that the purchaser–provider split should be put in the dustbin of history where it belongs.’ In questions, however, he was tempted further. The King's Fund