Press coverage around the publication of the NHS White Paper has been at best skeptical of the coalition’s reforms and at worst damning. Regardless of your opinion however, there is one point on which all must accept… that people are taking more responsibility for their own health, and that empowering patients – chiefly through choice – is a predictable and necessary course. For healthcare communications, this is highly significant. If patients are empowered to make decisions, who will inform and educate them about these decisions?
As Andrew Lansley, Health Secretary, outlined in his speech to the House of Commons, the guiding principle of the patient-centric strategy is ‘no decision about me, without me’. Patients will now have personal budgets, and in theory, the power to choose services at every stage of their care. This means patients could express a preference for private providers, although GPs will have the ultimate say due to their new commissioning powers. Critics quite rightly question how much power patients will actually have, and whether patients even want choice when many would prefer the expert guidance of a healthcare professional instead.
Whether patients want ‘choice’ or not, they will become increasingly immersed into a healthcare culture which says they should. They are being promised an ‘information revolution’ to give greater control of medical records and access doctors online, as well as the services of HealthWatch, a new agency to handle patient complaints and champion the views of the public across health and social care.
So how can healthcare communications support patients and bring value to this new NHS? In many ways. But here are just a few ideas to start with:
- Patients are likely to be confused about what they are being promised and what it actually means when it comes to their specific condition and healthcare needs. Pharma partnerships with trusted third parties could provide guidance on how to make the most of the services out there.
- Engagement programmes could teach patients how to make the most of their personal healthcare budgets supporting websites and social networks which allow the exchange of information about specific services would provide useful feedback and insights.
- Working with patient groups to obtain feedback on local services and if appropriate, assisting in lobbying activities could make positive changes to the new system, while building trust.
- Holding many small scale patient or healthcare professional feedback events, with Twitter feeds around the events to inform the outside world, could tap into opinion and generate advocacy around healthcare issues.
Tags: NHS, Patient choice, White Paper
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