The National Health Service
The health service has undergone fundamental change in service provision. The direction of change seeks to shift from an integrated system, with the NHS providing virtually all of the care, to a much more mixed one, in which the private sector plays an increasingly major part.
However, the reforms are having a detrimental effect on patients, staff and services. Hospitals face being shut down; wards are being closed; some trusts face crippling financial debts; jobs are being lost and services are being outsourced to private health providers. The reforms have taken many diverse forms and include: independent sector treatment centres; patient choice; payment by results; PFI and foundation hospital trusts.
Documents:UNISON Factsheet on hospital acquired infections - April 2007
UNISON Factsheet on hospital acquired infections - April 2007 [PDF]
Machines, markets and morals
Report Analysis the new politics of a democratic NHS.
Report Analysis the new politics of a democratic NHS [PDF]
For more information:
In the Interests of Patients?
Keep the NHS Working Campaign
CONTACT DETAILS
• The UNISON contact for the Positively Public campaign is Margie Jaffe.
Positively Public
1 Mabledon Place
London WC1H 9AJ
Email us
Recent documents
The role of private finance in public investment
The report shows that PFI is not value for money, despite the coalition government backing this form of investment. It warns that the cost of PFI has risen astronomically following the financial crisis and the gap between the rate at which the government and the private sector can borrow has widened dramatically.
The role of private finance in public investment
UNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
UNISON Response to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs - House of Lords
Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
The report catalogues how ever-growing billions of public money has become locked into financing massively expensive PFI schemes. The Government has committed taxpayers, for a generation to come, to a bill of more than £217bn worth of repayments between now and 2033/34 on just £64bn of PFI projects. PFI’s reliance on the private sector was supposed to give public building programmes more rigour and strength but, as the union’s latest report - “Putting the Public Back into PFI” – shows, in reality it has exposed them to greater hazards and weaknesses. Public projects have been tainted by private failure
Acrobat PDF version
Transforming Community Services
This factsheet outlines the process for implementing the Transforming Community Services programme for primary care trusts.
Transforming community services factsheet
