New website to promote patient choice
pharmafile | January 24, 2007 | News story | | patients
A new one-stop shop website is to be created to help NHS patients choose the best services for them.
Plans to make patient choice a major force in the health service has been badly delayed by IT problems and resistance from GPs. A survey in November found only 30% of patients who needed surgery were being offered options of where to have their operation.
The New Choice website will be available by the summer and the government hopes it will fuel patient demand for greater choice in the NHS, which it believes can, in turn, raise standards of care.
The new website will bring together a range of information currently spread across several websites, including comparative information on dentists and GPs, and access to patient surveys and local quality data. The site will also have links to other useful sources such as NHS Direct websites offering information on conditions and treatments.
Patients who need operations, such as hip replacements, can already choose from four local hospitals, and independent sector providers, but the government now wants to expand this hugely to include a choice of more than 200 hospitals and treatment centres.
The website will help people assess their own health risks, enable them to join discussion groups with people suffering with the same condition, as well as telling them about local services and how to access them.
It will also provide comparative information on dentists and GPs and allow visitors to see patient survey and quality data collected locally. In addition, the site will link to other relevant sources of information, such as NHS Direct online, with information on conditions and treatments.
At a seminar on patient empowerment at the Social Market Foundation, Patricia Hewitt said: "Genuinely empowering people to exercise choice is essential to creating an even better, more responsive NHS. Our aim is to provide a simple world-class public information resource that any patient can access to make a more informed choice about their health care. By 2008, patients will have the choice to be treated at any hospital in the country which meets NHS standards at NHS cost. We are serious about Patient Choice."
The government is planning to allow patients to use broadband connections in libraries to make their choices of where to have surgery, but this and other choice initiatives have had a lukewarm reception from doctors and patients.
GPs say most patients choose their local hospitals over providers which are potentially better but further away, and say many patients refuse the offer of a booklet helping them make a choice.
Serious problems and delays to the electronic Choose and Book system over the last two years have also held back progress towards greater patient choice, with many GPs sceptical about the project.
The government has issued an invitation to tender for companies interested in building its new dedicated choice website.
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