Liverpool City Council has received a Vison 100 award as one of the top forward-thinking organisations in the UK. The initiative, backed by BT and Cranfield School of Management, celebrates innovative and progressive private and public sector bodies.The panel of judges, which included Sir Peter Bonfield, CEO of BT; Peter Murray, Cranfield School of Management and Mark Goyder, Director of the Centre for Tomorrow’s Company, were influenced by structural changes and the development of e-government facilities. A new top team has transformed the way the council works – putting the customer at the centre of everything it does and providing first-class services. Eight city council directorates, which acted independently of each other, were abolished and replaced by joined-up team of executive directors.
Primary care is the poor relation of the health service is the conclusion of a report by the King’s Fund. Although over 90 per cent of all NHS care happens in the GP surgery or in people’s own homes, it does not receive a fair share of NHS resources. The report argues that this will not change until there is a major shift of power from hospitals to primary care groups.The report recognizes that progress has been made with the development of primary care groups in the place of GP fundholding. It also highlights the benefits for patients that follow from the introduction of salaried GP schemes in deprived areas and the phone in help line NHS Direct, but it claims that there is a danger that these initiatives will not reach their full potential until the fundamental imbalance between primary care services and hospitals is redressed.
