Reformed proposals for NHS reform appear to guarantee press access to new GP-led funding bodies.
The NHS Future Forum yesterday put forward new recommendations which follow a two-month consultation on Coalition Government proposals to scrap Primary Care Trusts and instead give GPs the power to commission most health treatment. The Coalition Government said it backed 99 per cent of the proposed changes.
Yesterday’s recommendations state that ‘transparency and openness should run through the health and wellbeing system, particularly in relation to how public money is spent”.
They state: ‘Commissioners of NHS serves should have a governing body that holds meetings in public and publishes details of their contracts with providers… All significant providers of NHS-funded services should be required, as an absolute minimujm, to publish board papers and minutes and hold their board meetings in public.”
Concerns have been raised that of the 100 NHS hospitals which have trust status, around two thirds hold their board meetings in private – according to evidence presented to Parliament in 2009.
Yesterday, Press Gazette reported that the General Medical Council is planning to press on with plans to hold more disciplinary hearings for doctors
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