BMA Cymru Wales manifesto for a healthier Wales
June 2006
Principles that underpin change
- Patients need to be able to see their own GP in order to maintain that special relationship of trust and friendship that helps support and guide them through illness. Multiple registrations, multiple agencies and fragmentation of care are not the way forward.
- Patients have a reasonable right to expect that most secondary care can be provided, at a high standard, at their local hospital by consultants that their GPs know and trust.
- Patients should have the right to be referred to anyone in the UK best qualified to help them. This should not depend on a contractual relationship but be determined by clinical need ie the money should follow the patient.
- Community hospitals lie at the heart of many localities. Patients without transport and the elderly in particular value the kind, personal and devoted care their nurses provide. They are an undervalued resource truly representing ‘care in the community’ which should not be closed down at the whim of any cost cutting agenda.
- Diagnostic and treatment centres should be provided within the NHS. The destabilisation of our hospitals as a result of a love affair with the private sector and the creation of an uneven playing field must stop.
- Above all, patients must be put before profit.
- Healthcare for patients must be free at the point of delivery and there must be equity for all patients throughout the UK (ie no post code variations).