THE DEMOCRATS' HEALTH PRESCRIPTION (via Robert Schwartz):

Doctors: cancer care is in crisis (Sarah-Kate Templeton, February 06, 2005, The Sunday Times)

THE government’s £2 billion scheme to revolutionise the treatment of British cancer sufferers has failed, with much of the money wasted on creating 400 bureaucrats.

A damning report by Britain’s biggest independent group of NHS doctors says many patients are waiting longer for treatment than they were when the programme was launched five years ago.

The proportion facing “appalling” delays for radiotherapy that could cure their cancer has doubled. Many new machines are waiting in boxes because of staff shortages.

The indictment by Doctors for Reform, a group of 900 NHS consultants and GPs, is a big blow for Alan Milburn, Labour’s election supremo, who launched the NHS cancer plan when he was health secretary. At a press conference last week Milburn said delivery of public services was at the heart of the party’s general election strategy.

The report — commissioned by the doctors’ group from three of Britain’s leading cancer experts — pins the blame on the failure to target money on frontline NHS staff. Instead, it says it has been spent on 400 “new, highly paid administrative” staff with no consequent “increase in clinical capacity”.