Tories would ‘end monopoly’ of NHS Choices

Tags: AIM Community Conservative party feedback GP NHS Choices Quality

16 Apr 2009

The Conservative Party would remove NHS Choices from Department of Health control and force it to compete on the same terms as other healthcare information providers.

In a document promising An NHS Information Revolution to Save Lives, the party says NHS Choices is failing to get adequate information to managers, clinicians and patients and that it is not sufficiently independent.

“Because private and third sector providers have clearly shown they are far better at providing and disseminating information than the public sector, we will end the dominance of NHS Choices and open up the market for the provision of information to any willing provider,” it says.

“Information providers will be able to compete on a level playing field for any government funding and will have equal access to all NHS information that the NHS Board decides should be collected.”

The information revolution document appeared on the Conservative Party website as party leader David Cameron travelled to Stafford to address the ‘Cure the NHS’ campaign group that was set up to lobby for improvements at Mid Staffordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The document argues that the recent Healthcare Commission investigation into high death rates and poor care at the trust identified a lack of information as a major problem.

It says that even where information is collected, it is “produced for managers not patients” and promises that, should the Conservatives come to power, better data, websites and services for the ‘digitally excluded’ will be created.

It says the aim will be to “empower patients and drive up standards in NHS care, both in hospitals and in the community.” However, some of its proposals echo steps that have already been taken by the present government.

For example, it says there will be “critical quality measures” that the Care Quality Commission will combine with other data and service standards, in order to assess the performance of hospitals and other healthcare providers.

It says patients will have access to this information “at the level of individual hospitals and, in some cases, individual departments within them” in order to make choices about their treatment.

It also says ‘patient reported outcome measures’ would be developed to collect patient views through surveys and that patients would be allowed to “give immediate feedback to hospitals.”

An initial set of PROMS was launched recently, while NHS Choices and independent alternatives already allow patients to feedback on hospital and GP services.

However, the paper says “a new and independent national voice” called Healthwatch would be set up to approve PROMS questions and to avoid “political manipulation” of the questions.

The paper also proposes giving money to charities and community groups to get health information to excluded groups, and trialling ‘information outreach centres’ to ‘cold-call’ people about health issues.

Cameron also called for a “full-scale, root-and-branch” inquiry into what went wrong at the Mid Staffordshire.

Link: An NHS Information Revolution to Save Lives

Reader's Comments

link

Neil.Bhatia@nhs.net

15 Apr 09 16:04

link is strange

pdf here:

http://www.conservatives.com/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/NHSInformationRevolution.ashx?dl=true

New political consensus

16 Apr 09 10:04

The most interesting thing here is just how little difference there is between what is being proposed by the Tories and what is currently available or being planned. Even the supposed plan to 'end the monopoly of NHS Choices' isn't that far from what is being planned in terms of information syndication.

However, I couldn't help thinking that there might be a fundamental contradiction in the claim that the third sector had proved itself to be superior in providing information to patients, whilst accepting that Choices is the dominant source of information. Can't have it both ways.

If you strip away the rhetoric and the obligatory dissing of 'bureaucrats', there isn't much new here.

Political grandstanding

davespod@yahoo.co.uk

16 Apr 09 10:04

"Healthwatch" will avoid "political manipulation" of the PROMs questions, will it? The questionnaires used for PROMs are things like the Oxford Hip Score, which were developed to rigorous academic standards, and have been around for longer than the New Labour government (they just haven't been used very much until now).

http://tinyurl.com/c2cr3t

All sounds like political grandstanding to me.

Right idea, wrong conclusion

16 Apr 09 11:04

Not a criticism of the Conservative party, but I think their conclusion in this article misses the point.

It's not the data presentation that is to blame, it's the data collection from provider services.

I believe that this is because the commissioning services in the DoH don't seem to recognise the cost of data collection - despite learning the lesson via the QoF for GP's.

There is still an expectation that services (acute and community) will be able to provide masses of additional information to commissioners and patients while cutting the cost of services at the same time.

This doesn't make any sense to me, as regardless of whether a service provider is an FT, PCT or private sector, if the clinical staff are spending more time creating information they will be spending less time seeing patients - thus increasing costs.

IMHO, unless this additional overhead is recognised at a senior level, World Class Commissioning is going to end up costing the NHS more for services and not less as envisioned.

Agree with "right idea, wrong conclusion"

16 Apr 09 12:04

And the relative costs of data collection get even higher when you're a small health organisation. Reading the Conservatives' paper, I thought the following example rather proved the opposite of what they intended:

"Yet, despite the reams of information out there, it is still incredibly difficult to find an answer to a simple question like: ‘How can my mother best be treated for Alzheimer’s in Somerset?’"

Surely that's an incredibly complex question, not simple at all?!?

Playing monopoly

16 Apr 09 12:04

Not sure it is a good thing to "end the monopoly". We still have the BBC as public service broadcasting, and i greatly value the advert-free zone (though I wish they applied the same rules to advertising their own content). I think patients mostly want impartial advice to trust, and independent sites may struggle without using advertising or other methods that could affect editorial content.

Even EHI, which largely does a good and critical job, sometimes appears constrained not just by avoiding libel, but by not offending the industrial hands that feed.

There are aspects that independence makes easier, particularly around critical comments, and also allowing patient interaction with the site. This partly comes from a scepticism and distrust of the heavily managed official line on official websites. But there are already a plethora of Health related sites out there.

NHS Organisations are told we must feed NHS Choices, will we have to continually check and feed these various providers of overlapping information, and is that really in the interest of citizens ?

I fear not. More likely to confuse and devalue.

No.. not another sucker for I want great care!!!

16 Apr 09 14:04

Do we really want a society like this?

Half-empty paper

16 Apr 09 15:04

So the Conservatives identify "top-down government targets" as one of the 2 major causes of the deaths at Mid-Staffs. And we read-on hopefully, great, perhaps they are going to end the culture of top-down targets rather than that horribly old-fashioned "profession" thing that was the core of the NHS culture I trained in.

No. Silence. Presumably they will leave one of the main causes in place.

So on to their great "information" example, a DVD for patients to explain the options for prostate cancer. Fan-ruddy-tastic. Government funding (as they say) for third party production of these.

Knowing the great care and time my urology colleagues spend with each of their patients exploring the personal options for them in detail, and I suppose rather more interactively than a DVD ever will, the politicians seem to be living on a different planet. Time to give us some professionalism back.

I can hear it now - "yes, I know the DVD says that, but it's out-of-date / wrong for your situation / too simplistic" etc etc. And given the discrepancy the patient feels that tiny, nasty bit of doubt about their treatment. Do you really think that's a better way?

Fundamental lack of understanding

sleepyfox@gmail.com

22 Apr 09 11:04

Given the following assumptions, which most here will agree are demonstrably proven:

* Politicians do not understand Healthcare

* Politicians do not understand IT

How on earth does anyone think that politicians making policy for IT Healthcare systems will improve the current situation?

Data production is not cheap, nor is it a 'side effect' of care processes. Furthermore making league tables of hospitals is an expensive placebo - how does the government propose to make unbiased meaningful metrics that cannot easily be gamed? As usual it's a bunch of meaningless rhetoric designed to elicit a knee-jerk reaction from Joe Public come election time.