New patient rights on the horizon
pharmafile | November 30, 2009 | News story | Medical Communications |Â Â NHS, patient rightsÂ
The government’s much-vaunted improvements in hospital waiting times could have a basis in law as early as next April.
Under new proposals patients will have legal rights to maximum waiting times for elective procedures and urgent cancer referrals.
If this makes it to the statute book, it would appear to signal the end of some NHS postcode lotteries.
Treatment by a consultant would start within 18 weeks of GP referral, while a cancer specialist would be seen a maximum of a fortnight after referral.
The NHS would have to “take all reasonable steps” to find a range of alternative providers – including the private sector – if it could not fulfill its obligations.
Prime minister Gordon Brown said this would enshrine the idea that patients “get a guarantee not a gamble”.
The proposals are contained in a consultation that is also floating the right to key diagnostic tests for suspected cancer patients within one week of seeing a GP.
The changes could also set in stone the right for people aged 40 to 74 to have an NHS health check every five years.
These would assess risks such as stroke, diabetes, and heart and kidney disease, encouraging early interventions in terms of medication, smoking cessation or advice on healthy eating and exercise.
“In the next decade, the NHS must make a decisive move towards being a more preventative service and a more people-centred service,” said health secretary Andy Burnham.
Stroke is the biggest cause of severe adult disability and third biggest killer in the UK, and the Stroke Association has welcomed the proposals.
“We could save up to 40 people from having a stroke every year if we could make sure that their blood pressure and other risk factors were kept under control,” says the charity’s director of communications, Joe Korner.
The move towards giving these changes a legal standing stems from the publication of the NHS Constitution in January, which set out the NHS’s “enduring principles”.
This consultation also seeks views on what rights might or should be made law in the future.
These include the right to choose to die at home, have access to NHS dentistry and personal health budgets, and the right to choose a GP offering evening and weekend appointments.
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