The Health Foundation's response to the NHS listening exercise - 'No decision about me without me: making it happen'
Date: May 2011
Download: The Health Foundation's response to the NHS listening exercise
Background
On 6 April the government paused progress of the Health and Social Care Bill and launched a listening exercise to engage with patients, clinicians and the public about its proposals for reform of the NHS in England. This exercise was led by the NHS Future Forum and considered the reforms under four themes:
- the role of choice and competition for improving quality
- how to ensure public accountability and patient involvement in the new system
- how new arrangements for education and training can support the modernisation process
- how advice from across a range of healthcare professions can improve patient care.
In our response to the NHS listening exercise we focused on choice as a mechanism for placing patients centre stage and creating an NHS with the principle of 'No decision about me without me' at its heart.
The Health Foundation’s response
For the NHS to be a first class health service, we need people to be given the right support so that they can be in control of their own health and healthcare decisions.
People who use the NHS consistently say that the choices and decisions that matter most to them are choices about the treatment and care they receive. However currently in England, the NHS performs very poorly in involving people in these decisions.
The Health Foundation is advocating that the Health and Social Care Bill defines choice in healthcare explicitly in terms of:
- choices to support healthy living
- choice of provider and the way in which care is provided
- choice of treatment including self-management support.
The Health Foundation would like the government to make three key changes to the Health and Social Care Bill to put patients centre stage and create an NHS with the principle of 'No decision about me without me' at its heart:
- the Bill should include a revised and expanded definition of choice
- the Bill should include a new duty which encompasses this broader definition of choice
- the Bill should include a requirement to ensure the dignity, privacy and independence of service users as an essential foundation to putting patients centre stage.
Making a reality of 'No decision about me without me' requires shifts in philosophy, culture, clinical behaviour and in our models of care. The new duty we are advocating will only successfully improve the quality of healthcare if its implementation is incentivised and if those with responsibility to perform it are held accountable.
