The NHS is in the middle of the transition from a publicly funded and publicly provided health service towards a publicly funded but increasingly privately provided service. It is thus following the course adopted in social care, with the closure of local authority owned care homes and the contracting out of service provision to commercial, […]
Category: David Lock
David Lock: What does duty of care mean?
This is a serious blog about death, about what can go wrong in the dying process and how it can be put right. It arises out of an inquest where I represented a family member who found the medical and caring profession had misunderstood what was meant by a “duty of care” and tried to […]
David Lock: Is this the start of the wholesale privatisation process of NHS management?
The prime minister has picked a new health advisor, Nick Seddon, who poured cold water on the creation of clinical commissioning groups and appears to be focused on moving NHS management away from public bodies and into the private sector. Whatever the rhetoric might suggest, changing the NHS into a commercial insurance model appears to […]
David Lock on integrated care experiments: at last some sensible thinking from the government for the NHS
The HSJ reports that the government is about to signal a series of large scale integrated care “experiments,” which could result in a movement away from the straightjacket of payment by results, with all of the biases towards activity, and away from prevention that have been reported on so often. Is this a first step […]
David Lock: Spot the legal howlers—picking over the assurances given by Lord Howe to the House of Lords
Healthcare lawyers have a new game—it’s called “spot the errors.” A number of us have been through the speech made by Lord Howe in winding up the debate in the House of Lords on the new NHS procurement regulations, on Wednesday 24th April, in order to count the legal howlers. This was, after all, the […]
David Lock: Should the NHS fund assisted conception for lesbian couples?
Amongst the issues in the in-tray of CCGs, the issue of funding for assisted conception (typically either intrauterine insemination or IVF) for lesbian couples is not highest on the agenda, but it is an interesting and difficult problem, and different PCTs came up with different solutions. The problem is easy to state, but is a […]
David Lock: Organ donation and presumed consent—not a complete answer?
Organ donation presents a unique problem for those concerned with the rationing of medical treatment. Unlike almost any other area of medical care, the constraint on supply of NHS medical treatment is not money to fund services, but the supply of donated organs. The NHS will provide all the funds needed to undertake transplant operations, […]
David Lock: “Privatisation regulations” mean big change
It is not every day that the Department of Health produces a formal response to two of my dry (and I accept potentially fairly boring) legal opinions. 23 March was a red letter day because it was the first time it has happened. The department produced a formal response to material I and my fellow barrister, Ligia […]
David Lock: A new and very different type of NHS in England
April 1 2013 saw the launch of a very different type of NHS in England. The current government has grappled with the same problems as all previous governments, but imposed radical surgery on an ageing patient. The previous government struggled with the problem of getting improved productivity and common high standards out of a largely […]
David Lock: Government creates bedblocking headache for CCGs on the day CCGs are created
The fact that 1 April is “April Fool’s day” ought to be enough to warn governments of all shades that it is a bad day to make major changes to government services, but that is the day that the latest batch of NHS reforms comes into play. It is the day that CCGs will take […]