Patient choice is a poor substitute for
Released: 01/02/2010
Although patient choice is important, there are limitations as to what patient choice can change, according to Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance. In a speech at the National Association of Patient Participation South West Conference, on Tuesday 2 February 2010, Dr Dixon will say: “If patients really want to have a handle over what services they get, then they need to be ‘inside’ the health service and ensure that they are on the bridge driving these decisions - not pawns in some large political game played by politicians and senior managers simply throwing them choice as a sop.”
He will refer to the excellent work of the National Association for Patient Participation (NAPP), which now has several hundred members who are leading patient involvement in their GP practices and which is encouraging more GP practices to do the same.
Dr Dixon will argue that the NHS could make substantial savings by allowing patients to fully engage and participate in the service and encouraging them to create health in their own community. “Patient involvement should go far beyond decisions on local services and health initiatives. Patients need to be part of co-producing the NHS itself. We also need to extend the whole issue of choice. In the individual consultation, with professionals like myself, the real choice when you have a painful shoulder is not the choice of hospital that I refer you to.
“It is the choice of different possible treatments – things that you might do for yourself, massage, acupressure, acupuncture, manipulation, physiotherapy in the surgery, a joint injection, conventional or a complementary remedy to name a few. Letting patients make an informed choice of what is done to them is far more important than simply giving them a choice of where they go when they go to hospital.”
Despite the importance of patient participation, Dr Dixon will say that, while some people really feel that the patient, collectively and with the right information really does know best and needs to be a full partner in making decisions about the health service - others just pay lip service to it.
As an example, he will mention Department of Health plans on vertical integration of community services with hospitals.
“The PCTs are now being steamrollered into producing their plans to achieve this by the end of March and the Department of Health preferred model is that these services should all be handed to Acute Trusts. Not a single patient was asked yet this unwise diktat will have far greater negative impact on the care of the average vulnerable patient than anything that patient choice might possibly achieve for the positive.”
He will add: “It is time to go the whole hog when it comes to patient involvement and the health service. It is the only way that we will get a good health service. It is the only way that we will get a cost effective health service. It is the only way that we will be able to hand our children and grandchildren a health service that we are proud of.”
Notes to editors:
1. For a full copy of Dr Dixon’s speech, email pressoffice@nhsalliance.org
2. The NHS Alliance is the only independent body that brings together primary care trusts’ chief executives and other senior managers, doctors and practice managers, nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals, along with board chairs and members. We are a value-driven organisation, with no political affiliation, which works in partnership with various bodies associated with the NHS to create a progressive health service that is free from the traditional tribalism of single interest groups.
3. For more information, please email pressoffice@nhsalliance.org or call 07772756674.