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Ruth Hunt talks to GP Dr ANDY KOVAC about how NHS fragmentation and the government’s obsession with gimmicks are having a devastating impact on patient care
NHS
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TORY meddling in the NHS has turned the much-loved national treasure into an acronym-spouting, constantly fracturing, overly bureaucratic, confusing mess, which is prone to systemic failures.
For Dr Andy Kovach* who is a practising GP, the top-down reorganisation of the NHS in 2012 by the then coalition government is a big part of the problem: “Since the controversial Health and Social Care Act 2012, the NHS in England has now become a bewildering and disjointed network of public, semi-public, semi-private, private and third-sector providers,” he says.
The main thrust of the Act was to abolish primary care trusts and strategic health authorities and instead transfer responsibility and funds away from the government on to clinical commissioning groups which have to judge which provider would receive the contract for a service.
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