22.02.19
NHS England, DHSC rejects reports that patients’ 30-year right to choose where they are treated is under threat
NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have rejected reports that the rights of patients to be able to choose where they are treated could be under threat as part of major new plans to reshuffle the NHS care system.
A leaked DHSC document, seen by The Times, claimed that Whitehall staff members are resisting the plans to abolish the health service’s competitive care market, telling health secretary Matt Hancock that the move would be reversing three decades of healthcare policy.
Responding to the reports, NHS England has labelled the arguments innacurate, stating that finer details about patient choice will be published in the future, and outlined key phrases in the Long Term Plan that highlights the plan's intentions of keeping patient choice open.
"The NHS will continue to provide patients with a wide choice of options for quick elective care, including making use of available Independent Sector capacity," the plan wrote.
"Patients will continue to have choice at point of referral and anyone who has been waiting for six months will be reviewed and given the option of faster treatment at an alternative provider, with money following the patient to fund their care."
Chief executive of NHS England Simon Stevens had previously asked Theresa May in January to remove the market-based systems in a bid to create a joined-up health service where acute and community care services work in tandem.
NHS England also went against the suggestion that the internal briefing said that the chief executive’s position is that government legislation is “essential” to fully implement the Long Term Plan, and, in the event that the Long Term plan is not delivered, the NHS could blame the government if there is no bill.
According to The Times’s report, however, the internal briefing to Matt Hancock went further, and quietly warned the health secretary that the internal market where health providers were encouraged to compete for business – introduced by Kenneth Clarke under Margaret Thatcher in 1991 – could be undone.
The briefing called on Hancock to be comfortable with this major restructure before signing off the plans, stating: “Removing the internal market will entail undoing some 30 or so years’ worth of policy and legislation in the English NHS, including some of the checks and balances that a market-type approach allows, and could have broader implications, for example, how choice works in the NHS.”
A DHSC spokesperson has said that the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan is not dependant on legislative change, and Hancock has been clear that patient choice will continue to be at the heart of the NHS.
“In the long-term plan the NHS put forward proposals for legislative change. These proposals are currently being considered by ministers,” the spokesperson added.
An NHS England spokesperson said: “As the NHS Long Term Plan states, the improvements it sets out in care and treatment can be delivered without new laws. However, as requested by both the cross-party House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee and by the prime minister, we have drawn up carefully targeted legislative changes which NHS leaders and clinicians judge would help provide better and more joined-up patient services.
"We will shortly be seeking wider views on them, but ultimately decisions will then be for government and parliament."
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