Patients unaware as flagship NHS choice scheme launched
pharmafile | January 12, 2006 | News story | |Â Â Â
Primary Care Trusts across England have launched an unprecedented marketing campaign to promote the new NHS choice agenda to patients.
From 1 January 2006 patients gained the right to choose from a number of local NHS and private hospitals and treatment centres.
Patients can choose from an approved list of at least four hospitals in their wider local area for elective surgery, with that choice increasing to any hospital in the country by 2008.
But the government has admitted that few patients are aware of the choice, with a MORI poll showing 41% had heard nothing at all about the flagship policy and 39% knowing just a little.
Despite the lack of awareness, given the choice of waiting half the time, most patients would travel to a NHS or private hospital anywhere in the UK rather than wait for their local hospital.
To raise awareness and help patients make their choices, PCTs have compiled glossy new brochures to provide detailed information on the choices available.
Each Choosing Your Hospital booklet includes patient reviews of hospitals against three areas of performance: access and waiting, cleanliness and comfort and information provided.
National director for patients and the public at the Department of Health Harry Cayton said: "This is going to be a real revolution in the way that we as patients think about the NHS.
"From now on there will be a third person, the patient, in the room with the doctor and the consultant making these decisions."
Others are not convinced the scheme really helps patients make an informed choice.
Independent prescribing consultant Noel Staunton thinks not. "I've grave reservations as to whether patients will make [a well informed] choice about which hospitals they go to," he said.
He added that some NHS trusts are beginning to display marketing skill, saying: "the keyed in hospitals are starting to sell themselves pretty well, especially the early foundation hospitals which seem to be ahead of the game".
The booklets will also pit NHS and those private services available against each other by allowing them to highlight their strengths and let patients make direct comparisons.
BUPA, Nuffield, BMI and Capio hospitals are among the private providers being used by some PCTs.
More contentiously, PCTs will be expected to give patients the choice of independent treatment centres (ISTCs) where they are available.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Treatment Centres, whether run by the NHS or the Independent Sector, offer patients fast and effective treatment for a range of common surgical procedures, particularly day cases.
"As such, they offer patients more choice of providers as well as different patient experiences and therefore fit well with the government's plans for offering choice of hospital."
By the end of 2005 there were 18 of the controversial independent sector centres around the country, but with more due critics say they are destablising the NHS.
A BMA survey of 177 NHS trust clinical directors found that although treatment centres benefited patients, doctors thought they damaged the long-term future of the NHS.
Last year the NHS orthopaedic ward in Southampton was forced to close after patients were transferred to an ISTC in order to meet government targets for operations carried out by non-NHS providers.
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