The Future NHS Forum, set up to evaluate the UK Health and Social Care Bill, has recommended that any overhaul of the NHS should be implemented gradually, with medical experts in addition to GPs involved in local decision making.

The NHS Future Forum, an independent group, was launched on 6 April as part of the UK Government's listening exercise on the current Health and Social care Bill.

To date the 45 member strong forum have met more than 6,700 people face to face, with a further 25,000 people submitting their views by email. In the report, published on 13 June, the forum made 16 key recommendations including:

• That proposed changes should be implemented only when the NHS is ready to carry them out. The deadline of 2013 for consortium to take responsibility for commissioning was scrapped in favour of a more fluid timescale.
• That the Secretary of State for Health should be ultimately accountable for the NHS.
• That patients should have the legal right to challenge those who provide their care allowing people to request that a particular care contract is reviewed if they feel those charged with purchasing services have chose badly.
• That private providers will be barred from "cherry picking" profitable patients and ignoring hard cases.
• That apart from GPs, nurses, specialist doctors and other clinicians should be involved in local decision making, and that clinical senates of NHS staff from different specialities should be established to provide "strategic advice".

The next day the Government responded that there will be a longer blanket deadline in the Bill for abolishing NHS trusts as legal entities, that GP commissioning consortia will be renamed clinical commissioning consortia, and that the commissioning groups must have a nurse and hospital doctor on their board.

Forum chairman Professor Steven Field, a general practitioner from Birmingham , said, "The principles underlying the Bill – devolving control to clinicians, giving patients real choices and control, and focusing on outcomes – are well supported. However, during our listening we heard genuine and deep-seated concerns from NHS staff, patients and the public that must be addressed if the reforms are to be progressed."

Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK's Chief Executive, welcomed in particular the proposed changes on research. "Establishing research as part of the core culture of the NHS is critical if we're to improve cancer survival. Patients who are treated in places where clinical research is integral to patient care can access new treatments more quickly and are more likely to survive their cancer," he said, adding that they also welcomed the commitment to involve a range of experts in cancer commissioning.