New ways of working needed to achieve better health care, King’s
Fund chief says
New ways of working will be necessary to get the most out of health care resources in the future. This was one of the main messages in a speech given by Niall Dickson, chief executive of The King's Fund, an independent charitable foundation working for better health.
Mr Dickson was the keynote speaker at the Pharmaceutical
Care Awards 2005, held on 29 June at Stationers’ Hall and Apothecaries’ Hall,
both in London (see p237 for details of two of the teams presented with
awards).
Moves away from providing services at hospital sites, particularly for
outpatients, should gather pace, Mr Dickson suggested. In particular,
hospitals should be viewed not in terms of the number of beds they have,
but in terms of patient flow, with flexibility to make them bigger or
smaller depending on need.
Other changes should include redrawing the boundaries between health
professions, he said. “It is truly remarkable that when people
are willing to attack problems and look at them in new ways, and people
are willing to look again at the traditional demarcations between professions,
how much can be achieved, using both supplementary and independent prescribing.”
He added: “There is no reason why other people cannot be doing
different things. If you start from the patient’s perspective,
then you can start redrawing the boundaries that way.”
Information technology will also provide an impetus for changing the
way services are delivered, he suggested. “Information will change
relationships between patients and professionals. It will change relationships
between professions. Developments in technology will make the notion
of a single gateway to health care through a GP superfluous, meaning
that health care services can be differentiated to a greater degree,
he added.
One cautionary note from Mr Dickson was that those with good working
practices and ideas need to ensure that others are following their lead. “Otherwise
pharmacists will simply end up repeatedly doing innovative work without
it being taken up by anyone else,” he said.
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Hospital Pharmacist