Reactions to review of NHS

LONDON (Reuters) - The government said the National Health Service would refocus on the quality of patient care as it published a review by Health Minister Lord Ara Darzi and draft constitution for the state funded programme on Monday.

Here is a summary of reactions:

"Darzi has wisely thrown out regulation as the organising principle of the NHS. He has replaced it with quality, by which he means clinical effectiveness, patient safety, and the patient experience" -- medical journal The Lancet.

"This has a real chance of helping to improve the quality of care that patients receive. The proposals should be given a fair wind -- they deserve one" -- Ian Kennedy, chair of NHS watchdog the Healthcare Commission.

"We are pleased the government has stated its intention to move away from target-driven health policies and to focus instead on the quality of patient care" -- British Medical Association Chairman Hamish Meldrum

"There are two significant omissions -- there are no estimates of how much all this will cost and no indication of just how different the government expects the quality of health services to be in five or ten years time," Niall Dickson, chief executive of health think-tank the King's Fund.

"We welcome the general tenor of Lord Darzi's report that the future emphasis should be on the whole patient/client experience in the NHS -- from the quality of the consultants' care to the standard of the food -- rather than the crude managerial targets of recent times" -- Karen Reay, health officer for trade union Unite.

"The service will be glad the review didn't set any new national targets and will want this to continue to be the case" -- Steve Barnett, acting chief executive of the NHS Confederation, representing 95 percent of NHS organisations.

"The complete lack of vision in these proposals means that, sadly, the government has missed its 'once-in-a-generation opportunity' to enact the real reform that our NHS needs" -- Conservative Health Spokesman Andrew Lansley.

"When the dust settles people will see that little has changed and that the system of command and control diktat by Whitehall lives on" -- Liberal Democrat Health Spokesman Norman Lamb.