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National Voices letter to The Times
10 January 2012
More than 40 national health and social care charities – all members of the National Voices coalition - have written to The Times calling on the government to make the Health Bill work better for patients and other service users.
The charities say that the Bill is weak on patient involvement in their care. However this can and should be remedied easily.
While the Bill sets out to create an NHS where there is ‘no decision about us, without us’, as it stands, it contains no direct reference to the most effective forms of shared decision making with patients.
These are: shared decisions about the most appropriate treatments, based on patient preferences and values as well as clinical knowledge; personalised care planning, where professionals help us organise care packages over time, including towards the end of life; and support for people to manage chronic conditions in order to maximise quality of life.
Promoting these three aspects of shared decisions is proven to create better health outcomes, with more appropriate treatment, a better experience of care, and better use of healthcare resources.
Don Redding, Policy Director of the National Voices Coalition says: “The government accepts this evidence but has so far refused to refer specifically to these aspects of care in the Bill. At National Voices, we strongly believe that without such legal clarity, the new care commissioners will not understand their duty of ‘patient involvement’ and how to put it into practice.”
The letter is signed by national charities large and small.
