BMA Cymru Wales manifesto for a healthier Wales
June 2006
Promote involvement
The health service today can do much more for patients than was the case even 10 or 20 years ago. These advances have led to increased public expectations and rising demand. However, there are also limits to what can be achieved. It is essential that the public are involved in developments and informed about services to help them understand the issues and make appropriate use of available NHS resources. Greater involvement of NHS staff in the decision-making process is also needed.
The BMA calls on all Welsh political parties to:
Involve staff and patients in the development of services
Managers and politicians take the big decisions in the NHS. Too often decisions are reached on the basis of financial considerations or political imperatives rather than clinical need. It can be demoralising for health professionals who have been trying to get additional resources to develop local services to find that money is suddenly available to send patients elsewhere to be treated as part of a short-term waiting list initiative. It is vital that the management of the NHS is led by clinicians and involves the public at all levels.
Ensure patients are involved in decisions about their healthcare
The public must be informed about both the benefits and the limits of what can be achieved by medicine within the constraints of available resources to ensure that discussions between doctors and patients are based on a realistic appreciation of the available options. Decisions about the reconfiguration of services need to be made openly and explicitly in Wales. Patient information leaflets provide valuable advice and support to patients. The NHS must invest in these and make them available in different languages and accessible to those with visual impairment. More and more health information is available on the internet but some of it is misleading and some plainly dangerous. BMA Cymru Wales would like to see a system of kite-marking websites that meet a particular standard to indicate to patients that they are accessing quality information. Patients should also be encouraged to take responsibility for their own health.
Educate the public about developing a modernised health service
The public have an understandable attachment to local health services but these are often provided in outdated Victorian buildings. There are clear difficulties in providing 21st century care in 19th century surroundings. It is essential that modern facilities are provided for a modern health service. This may result in services being provided from fewer sites in the future, but the benefit will come from improved care. Replacement facilities should be publicly funded rather than provided through public private partnerships (PPPs). PPPs bring no new capital investment into the health service and are, in effect, a tax that has to be paid by future generations. This method of funding simply transfers the burden of debt from central government to NHS trusts. BMA Cymru Wales believes that all political parties should consider public funding as the best option for replacing outdated facilities.
Inform the public on how best to use the health service
Most patients only use the NHS when they really need to but there are too many examples where services are used inappropriately. Time and resources are also being wasted by people failing to turn up for appointments. Evidence shows that young people are more likely to miss appointments and the use of innovations in technology to target them with, for example, low resource IT-generated reminders could help address this wasteful problem. BMA Cymru Wales also supports campaigns to encourage patients to self manage simple complaints like coughs and colds and works closely with the Developing Patient Partnership to do so.
Give patients access to accurate information about health services
The BMA supports the publication of clinical outcome indicators that help to show how health services are performing. However, it is essential that any such information is robust and takes account of regional and local variations. Modern healthcare is delivered by teams of health professionals and therefore BMA Cymru Wales believes that clinical outcomes should not be published on individual performance but on that of the teams that provide the treatment.