NHS expectations ‘artificially inflated’
pharmafile | July 6, 2009 | News story | |Â Â NHS, healthcareÂ
Expectations of what the NHS can deliver may be artificially inflated by the government's latest grand plan, according to the King's Fund.
The healthcare think tank issued its warning after prime minister Gordon Brown fleshed out his strategy this week in the Building Britain's Future document.
As part of a bid towards "further reforming Britain's public services", the government is targeting healthcare.
The prime minister said: "We will look closely at where we can go further to establish new rights, for example to NHS dentistry [and] to evening and weekend access to GPs."
There may also be individual budgets made available for people with long-term or chronic conditions, and the introduction of a "right to choose to die at home", he added.
"The guarantee of access to NHS dentistry and to enable patients with long-term conditions to die at home are laudable ambitions," said King's Fund chief executive Niall Dickson.
"But if the service cannot achieve that standard immediately, there is a risk of alienating staff and frustrating patients."
The government said patients will also "enforceable rights" to "hospital treatment within 18 weeks, access to a cancer specialist within two weeks, and free health-checks on the NHS for people aged 40-74".
However, the King's Fund points out that several of these future pledges are merely reheated from earlier documents.
"We do need to be clear that many of the 'rights' set out in the prime minister's announcement are currently 'must do's' for the NHS," says Dickson.
The 18-week wait from GP referral to the start of hospital treatment was in 2004's NHS Improvement Plan and was effectively met on time, at the end of last year.
Nine years ago the NHS Cancer Plan established a two-week maximum target from referral to outpatient appointment for "urgent" cases, which 95% of those patients currently experience.
And health checks for 40-year-olds were announced in April last year, with the scheme rolled out in April this year.
"The idea that patients should have a right to certain standards of treatment is a good one," Dickson concluded.
"The government should be congratulated on reducing the number of central targets, some of which were hard to justify."
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