ding began to be concerned for the future when Fuses started clawing back Fund Surpluses at the year end and then, as outlined above, before the year end.THE 1999 REORGANISATION: 'THE NEW NHS'The winter of 1995-6, as every winter, saw high profile stories in the press of a seasonal NHS Bed Crisis. General Practitioners found themselves unable to find local hospitals with beds free into which to admit urgent patients. The phenomenon of patients lying on trolleys in Casualty for hours until a bed was found seemed to be spreading. Several ill patients were transferred a hundred miles or more to an available bed, only to die shortly after arrival. In particular, the media latched on to the problems of finding Paediatric Intensive Care beds. Because such stories are a recurring seasonal event, it was difficult to objectively interpret their significance. Several possible factors were put forward to explain the overall problem: hospitals were running with higher than average bed occupancy - usually 95% or more - which meant there was no slack to take up the predictable seasonal increase in emergencies; there is a Nursing shortage, partly due to demography (fewer young people); the division of the NHS into individual, competing 'Businesses' militates against any sort of cooperation to make the best use of limited wider resources.In May of 1997 the Conservative government was defeated in a landslide victory by the Labour Party. The manifesto on which this election had been won included affirmation that their policy on health would include abolition of GP Fund holder status, on the grounds that the two-tier system it engendered was unfair. However, they stated that they believed that the Purchaser-Provider split had been useful, especially combined with a greater input from GPs in a contracting role. Exactly what structure the new government envisaged to replace The 1990 Changes remained unclear through the election and for some months afterward...
