WHETHER or not the surprise resignation this week of NHS chief executive Sir Alan Langlands was triggered by him getting wind of the plan by Health Secretary Alan Milburn to draft in doctors, nurses and hospital chiefs to run the health service instead of Whitehall bureaucrats, others may be more charmed by it.

For, having seen the NHS plunged into chaos this winter and with hospital waiting lists looking as sick as ever, new broom Mr Milburn is in need of radical remedies to improve matters, both in practical terms and politically.

It is no surprise that the sharpest fall in the government's popularity came in the wake of the recent beds crisis.

So, then, why not recruit front-line health workers from the best-performing sectors of the NHS and use their expertise and experience to spread good practice to the worst sectors?

There is, after all, evidence of hospitals with similar resources achieving starkly different results, suggesting that the better ones can indeed teach others to improve.

It is reported today, as details emerged of the new modernisation board headed by Mr Milburn himself, that most members of the present NHS executive have not had any front-line experience in health care for at least 20 years and some have none at all.

Under their supervision the health service overall is in a poor state, so therefore it would seem the time has come to employ, instead, the hands-on skills and experience of the top-performers in the areas where it is not failing.

Wisely Mr Milburn, we are told, plans not to remove these people from the front-line but to draw them together for monthly meetings that will steer the NHS's progress and policy. There is, however, a 'but' accompanying this idea - that of the resourcing constraints that are the bane of the health service.

Improvements may be achieved by more heath care providers making better uses of the resources they have, but they will always be limited if the resources are always insufficient.

And today, just as Mr Milburn's plan for an NHS modernisation board is revealed, we also see from a report by top accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers that even in an economy set to grow strongly over the next two years, the government will still struggle to meet the NHS's spending needs.

Whatever better prescription Mr Milburn and his new experts write, the Chancellor will have to increase his dosage to make the plan really work .

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