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BMA casts doubt over reality of 'patient choice' |
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29 May 2008 |
The British Medical Association has cast doubts over the reality of the supposed 'patient choice', since patients opting for elective surgery are now able to choose from any NHS-approved hospital in the country but are often denied the information on which to base their choice.
The British Medical Association has cast doubts over the reality of the supposed 'patient choice', since patients opting for elective surgery are now able to choose from any NHS-approved hospital in the country but are often denied the information on which to base their choice.
This has been a widely publicized concern of Kester Cunningham John since they began working on cases brought about by botched surgery in some of the clinics set up to handle the surgery. Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) are contracted to the Department of Health to undertake surgery on behalf of the NHS, but among the alarms sounded at their instigation was the concern over clinical standards.
The Department has issued a new code of practice covering hospital advertising and promotion, in order to make choices fair and open. But the BMA is concerned that this choice could affect services and doubt whether the information provided will be helpful to patients.
The BMA has warned that patient choice linked to payment by results could have a detrimental effect on some hospitals. Payment by results means that hospitals receive funding according to the number of patients they treat and the 'results' of that treatment rather than fixed sums of funding.
There is a risk that by opting for another provider some other local services would be cut back because of the loss of funding. This may mean, for example, that crucial emergency services would be threatened or that patients would need to travel further from their home than they do now for some conditions.
The instability of local services will have major impacts on their ability to plan ahead, innovate for the future and train the doctors, nurses and other professionals the NHS requires.
Sandra Patton is a member of Kester Cunningham John's specialist clinical negligence team. She has given evidence to both the House of Commons Select Committee and the Healthcare Commission on her concerns over patient choice and the working of the private sector within the NHS.
'In order that patients have real choice about their treatment, they need accurate information to help them make that decision. But it's not available to them.
'For example, ISTCs have been criticized widely because they don't publish comparable data to NHS hospitals, in spite of the requirement that they should do so. The Department of Health hides behind claims of 'commercial confidentiality'.
'Now, the Department of Health seems seriously to be suggesting that patients should be guided in what are crucial decisions affecting their health and wellbeing by what they read in advertisements.
'Public health is not a throwaway consumable that can be replaced if it goes wrong. We're talking about patients' health here, and a number of my clients have suffered botched surgery and didn't have the grounds to make an informed choice of where to have their operation.'
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