Major 2012 NHS reform failed to deliver on promises, finds study

The government’s major reorganisation of the health service in England in 2012, the most sweeping in the recent history of the NHS, failed to reduce admissions to hospital, shows a new study that tracked the effects of the changes on hospital workloads. Furthermore, it found an increase in outpatient visits to specialists after 2012.

The study, reported in PLOS Medicine,1 looked at the effect of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which introduced the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) that gave greater control of secondary care budgets to GPs. Policy makers hoped that this would shift care away from hospitals to the community.

Using routinely …