Will doctors need MBAs in NHS reforms?

One thing you discover as a hack covering the present health debate and the publication of the health white paper today is that it is so big a subject and so complex a bill that it is almost impossible to get on top of it. Interviewing  ministers and medics about it is no easier.

So you are left with strange generalisations on all sides – and intriguing discoveries. For example the epic growth of private health companies now running vast chunks of the NHS.

You also find yourself wondering about the doctors who will run these vast consortia. Six years to learn the medicine…another one to secure the MBA? And will medical students strive for the ultimate accolade “good at admin”?

Then there are the politics. Word down at Westminster is that Andrew Lansley is a relatively isolated figure. Even now it is being said that he may not survive the next re-shuffle. Further that Mr David Cameron had very little idea of just how big the Lansley revolution was planned to be.

Many of the building blocks for what the Coalition is now doing seem to have been laid by the Labour Government. In some cases without many of us noticing. After years of reform, many argue it’s time to let the NHS bed down a bit – to coin a phrase.

More or less anyone you ask will tell you that the NHS is a far, far better service than it was a decade and a half ago. I don’t myself run into much dissatisfaction with it. So why the hurry? What about letting the first 141 GP led consortia (currently running alongside PCTs) run for a bit, then evaluating them and deciding whether to go on?

There are moments when all this feels like something of a looming train wreck in the making. Yet there appear to be few divisions inside the Coalition about the direction of travel. It’s going to be quite a challenge to cover it all.

Read more about the NHS on the Channel 4 News special report.