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Public and patient involvement in the NHS

March 2008

The health service ultimately belongs not to the politicians who like to sing its praises, or the staff who deliver it, but to the public who fund it and the patients who use it. That's why their active involvement in the NHS is important, if anything more so now that the government has invested more of their money in it and, increasingly, encouraged them to approach it as consumers, rather than simply recipients of care.

In the second of our series of BMA papers on the future of the NHS in England in its sixtieth year, we look at the concept of public and patient involvement, focusing on the new mechanisms that are being put in place as part of a drive to give local communities more say in commissioning services.

Our verdict is that they are at risk of having the opposite effect, and that patient voice is in danger of being seriously weakened. If we are genuinely to increase the involvement of ordinary people in their health service, we need to give them far more effective fora for expressing their views. This paper outlines how that might be achieved and we hope it will provide a stimulus to the public, the profession and, particularly, to the government to ensure that the necessary changes are made. As the NHS reaches sixty, it needs to mature into an effective patient and professional partnership delivering a service that really meets the needs of those who use it.