5th
May 2004
McNeil
Launches Patients’ Parity Bid
MSP
for Greenock and Inverclyde and Labour member of the Scottish Parliament’s
Health Committee, Duncan McNeil, says tomorrow’s Stage 3 debate on the National
Health Service Reform (Scotland) Bill, is an ideal opportunity to give
patients’ rights parity with those of professionals in the NHS.
A
series of amendments laid down by Mr McNeil aim to give patients a legally
enforceable right to treatment within set time-limits and will oblige the new
Community Health Partnerships to make local people aware of these rights.
Speaking
ahead of tomorrow’s debate, Mr McNeil said:
“The
Partnership Agreement pledges that ‘the interests of ... the patient … will
always come first.’
“Sadly,
I’m not sure our communities would agree.
When health bosses sit down to consider the most controversial issue
facing the NHS in Scotland today – service re-design – they have certain
legally-binding obligations. There
is, for example, the European Working Time Regulations, not to mention the new
consultant contract. In fact, there
is some sort of statutory protection for everyone’s interests – except the
patients’.
“Only
once the four corners of the debate, as defined by law, are agreed, do the
interests of patients get a look in.
“That
is not right. I am therefore
seeking to redress the balance and give patients interests’ parity with the
professionals’.”
However,
Mr McNeil warns that steps must be taken to ensure that the public is fully
aware of their new rights, saying: “You cannot exercise a right you do not
know exists and a right you cannot exercise is no right at all.
“That
is why I am seeking to place a statutory duty on Community Health Partnerships
to make sure the public is aware of to what they are entitled, within what
timescale and what alternatives sources of treatment they can access in the
event the services cannot be delivered within the timescales.”
He
concluded:
“I
do not pretend these amendments in themselves will put patients at the heart of
the NHS, or even the decision making process.
They simply give their interests the same status as those of the
professionals.”
ENDS
Notes:
Amendment
6 seeks to place a statutory duty on Community Health Partnerships to take
proactive steps to make the public aware of:
To
what they are entitled;
Within
what timescale; and
What
alternatives sources of treatment they can access in the event the services
cannot be delivered within the timescales.
Amendment
9 gives Ministers the right, through regulations, to set legally binding
guarantees for patients on maximum waiting times for certain services.
Amendment
10 gives Health Boards, in partnership, a duty to ensure the adherence to these
waiting time guarantees, across Scotland.
Amendment
11 says that the powers of intervention in the Bill will apply to bodies (or
persons) who don’t comply with the waiting time regulations.
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