MUCH OF what the government's white paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, will mean for the NHS in England remains unknown and its proposals are evolving almost daily. Some of the proposals are clear, however. By 2013, for example, primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities (SHAs) will have ceased to exist. Meanwhile, GPs operating in hundreds of consortia are to be given responsibility for commissioning about £80 billion-worth of health services on behalf of patients. How these radical plans will be followed through and how they will affect nurses have yet to be explained, but it is certain that there will be significant job losses across NHS management.
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