Panorama
In the round, we thought the Panorama programme on private sector involvement in the NHS was well presented and balanced. This is an emotive, complex and poorly understood issue. It was remarkable, for example, that nobody knew how many private GPs operated in England. We make three observations to stimulate the debate:
- The language set of NHS compared to the private sector representatives on the programme were markedly different:
- NHS representatives were defiant and made bold assumptions about the detrimental effect of private sector provision. A couple of assumption should have been challenged (see points 2 and 3)
- In contrast, the private sector was cautious, careful to make no assertion that the NHS was performing poorly, and to only put forward the argument that choice is a positive driver for change
You will have missed this observation if you just followed the programme narrative which positioned the private sector as bold, confident and assertive.
- A claim made more than once by NHS representatives was, to paraphrase, “you either choose care (NHS) or profit (private sector)”. We made the point last week in our discussion about PCTs, that this misses the point entirely. It should be about the patient, not the provider model. If one type of provider can deliver a better service for a lower cost, then that is better for the patient, and for the tax payer. The right provider model could be a public, private or social enterprise.
- Another bold claim made on the show was that “most of the increase in expenditure over the last 7 years has gone on private providers not the NHS”. Perhaps Panorama’s research unit tired of getting the data to challenge this claim; we’ll make some estimates and post them next week.
