PLAN TO DESTROY THE NHS – Greater Manchester  Test-Bed for Five-Year Forward View 

Report by Anna Athow
Simon Stevens, the new chief executive of NHS England, former President of global health at UnitedHealth, a large US health corporation, proposed the FYFV in October 2014.
FYFV is written in code, to give the impression that it is in favour of sustaining the NHS according to its founding principles and merely wants to make it more financially sustainable.
Closer scrutiny reveals a five year plan to impose “new care models” (NCMs), inspired by the US health market. These would replace our current GP surgeries, District General Hospitals (DGHs) and tertiary care.
The plan depends on a gigantic shift of clinical services out of DGHs and into large new out-of-hospital providers fashioned after American health maintenance organisations, such as Kaiser Permanente. The remaining hospital care would be divided between dumbed down smaller hospitals and networks of large specialised providers, often using ‘prime contracting.’ The closure of fully backed A&E departments would accelerate.
FYFV alleges that these NCMs, as well as much more ‘self- care’ by patients, would drastically reduce demand for hospital care and ramp up “efficiency”, such that it would be possible to save up to £30bn a year by 2020.
The plan is predicated on an attack on the national terms and conditions of the NHS public sector workforce, the downgrading of its training, and drastic reduction in numbers employed.
The aim is to cut staffing costs by; increased productivity up to 2-3% a year, meaning more patients per nurse; reduced skill-mix; local pay; 24/7 working with unsocial hours paid at reduced rates; staff required to work “across organisational and sector boundaries” (that is to be outsourced), and have “flexibility to deliver new models of care, including the development of transitional roles’ (meaning lower qualified staff taking on doctors and nurses roles). There would be a huge increase in unpaid labour in the form of volunteers.
This plan is about destroying our NHS services and imposing NCMs, as attractive investments for multinational corporations, which are already circling like vultures to enter the healthcare market opened up by the Health and Social Care 2012.
The ” test bed ” for the NCMs is to be Greater Manchester (GM) under Chancellor George Osbornes 27.2.15 ‘ Devo Manc’ proposals. GM is to be a “trailblazer for the objectives set out in the five year forward view”.
Oppose the FYFV. Oppose the break up of the NHS under ‘devolved’ authorities.
Defend our NHS publicly funded, publicly provided.
Defend our NHS structures, our GP surgeries, our DGHs, tertiary care, ambulance services etc. Defend our NHS public workforce
Page 4 of the Memorandum of Understanding of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Devolution, spills the beans on what this is.
“This work will now form part of a much broader framework where NHSE are working with GM to prepare the full devolution of relevant NHS funding to GP and for GM TO BE THE TRAILBLAZER FOR THE OBJECTIVES SET OUT IN THE FIVE YEAR FORWARD VIEW.”
The main objectives of the FYFV are to impose ” new care models” and create a ‘ modern workforce’ (see below – one pager)
We are told it will be ” an early implementer and test bed for new, innovative approaches to delivering new models of integrated health and social care…..”
(innovative always means privately provided)
So a devolution of the requirement to keep within the inadequate funding budget -yes, but as far as pursuing the goal of forcing through the ‘ redesign’ (and there is a huge Healthier Together plan to downgrade 5 DGHs going on at the moment) NHSE is right in there as partner in the MOU and Simon Stevens himself is sitting on the new ” Health and social care devolution programme board which will provide OVERALL STRATEGIC OVERSIGHT AND DIRECTION OF THE PROGRAMME”. P 11.
So this entire thing is absolutely centrally directed by NHSE, which will ensure the imposition of all the new market structures, applauded and facilitated by Osborne and Hunt.
No consultation with the population. A disgraceful fait accompli 
Regards
Anna