NHS review background

The NHS Next Stage Review was announced by the Secretary of State for Health, Rt.Hon.Alan Johnson MP in July 2007. The Review was led by Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham and aimed to build on existing good practice and to be a catalyst for the implementation of good ideas.

It is not intended to be about top down organisational restructuring but is to focus on delivering the best services for patients and to create organisational stability to do this. It seeks to address four critical challenges:
  • Working with NHS staff to ensure that clinical decision-making is at the heart of the future of the NHS and the pattern of service delivery
  • Improving patient care, including high-quality, joined-up services for those suffering long-term or life-threatening conditions, and ensuring patients are treated with dignity in safe, clean environments
  • Delivering more accessible and more convenient care integrated across primary and secondary providers, reflecting best value for money and offering services in the most appropriate settings for patients
  • In time for the 60th anniversary of the NHS, establishing a vision for the next decade of the health service which is based less on central direction and more on patient control, choice and local accountability and which ensures services are responsive to patients and local communities

The Review aimed to make recommendations to the Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Health and Chancellor on how the NHS can best meet these challenges whilst delivering a publicly funded, comprehensive, affordable, high-quality service on the basis of need and not ability to pay.

The Interim Report (avaliable as a PDF document download at the foot of this page) on the NHS Next Stage Review was published in October 2007. It usefully highlighted four broad factors which could improve the service, namely:
  • Access
  • Dignity and the patient as a person
  • Integrating care/partnership
  • Choice and personal control
These four factors are an inherent to the nature and role of physiotherapy (and other Allied Health Professionals - AHPs). The profession should take the opportunity of the Review to impress upon Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham and his team the major contribution physiotherapy and AHPs could make to delivering health and social care aspirations they have identified. These focus on 8 key areas of service:
  • Maternity and newborn care
  • Staying healthy
  • Children's health
  • Planned care
  • Acute care
  • Mental health
  • Long term conditions
  • End of life care

As part of the national stakeholder engagement process for the Our NHS, Our Future Review Professor Lord Darzi met with AHPs on the 25th March 2008, which provided an opportunity for AHPs to promote their combined and individual unique contributions to health and well-being service delivery. The conference report is available as a PDF download below.


This text on this page was last updated on 23 Nov 2007.