DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
News Release (2008/0071) issued by The Government News Network on 30
June 2008
Darzi: Giving
patients more say and staff more freedom to shape high quality
care round patients' needs.
Ambitious plans were unveiled today by leading surgeon and Health
Minister Ara Darzi, to raise the quality of healthcare for
patients right across the NHS.
By putting patients' wishes first and giving doctors and
nurses the freedom to respond to those wishes and offer the safest
and most effective treatments, his proposals will transform the
quality of care that patients receive.
After a 12-month review, led by 2,000 clinicians and staff across
the country and involving 60,000 patients, public and staff, Lord
Darzi has set out proposals that will give patients more choice,
and information, reward the hospitals and clinics that offer both
the highest quality of care, and provide the most responsive services.
The enormous investment that the health service has seen over the
past eight years has led to more staff, faster access to care and
a dramatic reduction in waiting lists. The final report of Lord
Darzi's review entitled "High Quality Care for
All", sets out plans that build on this progress and show how
innovation and creativity of staff can further improve services.
The changes will be driven not through top-down targets but by
giving responsibility to the staff at local level. The values
that led to the creation of the NHS 60 years ago will be enshrined
in a new Constitution, as well as setting out for the first time
the rights of all patients.
Lord Darzi said:
"This report will enable frontline doctors, nurses and
patients - who provide and use NHS services - to put into practice
their visions for high quality care.
"As a surgeon I know how vital it is to balance the quality
of the patient's experience - a clean and safe environment,
being treated with compassion dignity and respect - with the
success of the treatment they receive.
"By measuring this quality across the service and publishing
that information for the first time, both staff and patients can
work together to make better informed choices about their care.
"By setting clearer standards, and recognising and rewarding
innovation in quality, we can keep pace with the very latest
advances in medicine and technology. By investing in additional
health centres and services for GPs the NHS will diagnose illness
faster and help people to stay healthy, as well as treating them
when they are sick.
"Today we are also publishing a new workforce strategy for
the NHS that will ensure the service continues to have the most
talented staff, fully supported to deliver quality care for
patients. We are committed to making career progression clearer,
easier and more flexible for all staff and having clinical leaders
at every level in the service. By unlocking their talent we will
enable them to provide a level of care which was unimaginable even
20 years ago."
Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson said:
"There are big challenges ahead but the NHS is clearly in
much better shape than it was ten years ago - borne out by
increasing satisfaction rates among patients and public. My first
job as Health Secretary was to launch this review with the Prime
Minister and I'd like to thank Lord Darzi for his outstanding
work over the past year, reaching parts of the health service
never reached before.
"These locally driven, clinically led plans show how quality
of care will be raised right across the country, with doctors and
nurses supported to offer big improvements in treatment at the
bedside. Quality of life will be improved and more lives will be saved."
The report sets out how the NHS will -
Give patients more information and choice:
* The NHS Constitution will put privacy, dignity and cleanliness
at the heart of care, with tough new enforcement powers coming in
to tackle, for example, healthcare infections, and a checklist for
all hospitals to reduce catheter-induced infections.
* Measuring quality of care and outcomes of treatment right
across the service and publishing that information for the first time.
* Most effective drugs for patients with new right to all
NICE-approved drugs, faster approvals process and transparent
decision making.
* A patient's legal right to choice of any provider,
including choice of GP services.
* 5000 patients with complex long-term conditions will pilot new
personal budgets.
* Personal care plans for all 15 million patients with a
long-term condition.
Help people to stay healthy, as well as treating them when they
are sick:
* Supporting family doctors to help patients stay healthy and
investing record amounts in new or improved wellbeing and
prevention services that are easy to access.
* Launching a nationwide 'Reduce Your Risk' campaign to
raise awareness of free vascular checks for 40 - 74 yr olds and
help people to know when they need to get help.
* Piloting new approaches to help family doctors, community
nurses, hospitals, local authorities and others work across
traditional boundaries to provide more joined-up services and
better health outcomes for people with conditions such as diabetes.
Enable frontline staff to initiate and lead change that improves
quality of care for patients:
* No additional top-down targets beyond the minimum standards.
Targets have been vital in driving up minimum standards of care
across the NHS, but new accountability faces increasingly outwards
to patients and the public and is based on the quality of care delivered.
* Every provider of NHS services will need to systematically
measure, analyse and improve quality, displaying it to staff
through 'clinical dashboards' to measure their
performance and use the information to make continuous improvements.
* A clinical voice at every level - to ensure decisions are based
on the best medical evidence.
* Enhancing professionalism. There will be investment in new
programmes of clinical leadership, with all clinicians encouraged
to be practitioners, partners and leaders in the NHS.
Fully support NHS staff:
* Establishing NHS Medical Education England - an independent,
advisory non-departmental body that will scrutinise workforce
planning proposals for doctors and dentists, as well as bringing a
coherent professional voice on matters relating to education and
training. Work will be taken forward with other professions to
decide what other national advisory bodies are required.
* Tripling investment in foundation periods for nurses - a new
period of preceptorship for nurses at the start of their careers,
which will provide newly qualified staff with protected time and
support as they move into practice for the first time.
* A new tariff-based system for education funding - for the first
time education funding will follow the trainee, which will improve
transparency, promote fairness and reward quality.
Notes for Editors:
1. The Department of Health has today published:
* 'High Quality of Care for all' The NHS Next Stage
review final report by Lord Darzi
* A consultation document on
the NHS Constitution
* NHS Next Stage Review : A High Quality
Workforce: the Workforce, planning, education and training strategy
Copies can be read at: http://www.dh.gov.uk or http://www.ournhs.nhs.uk at 3:30pm.
2. The 10 Strategic Health Authorities in every region of the
country recently set out improvements in eight pathways of care
and the main themes of these local plans were:
* Staying healthy - people want more support and advice to stay
healthy
* Maternity and new-born. Women want greater choice
and a more personal experience
* Children's. Services
needed to be more effectively designed around the needs of
children and families.
* Acute care. Saving lives by creating
specialised centres for major trauma, heart attack and stroke
care
* Planned care. More care could and should be provided
closer to people's homes.
* Mental health. Challenge to
extend services in the community, notably for psychological
therapies
* Long-term conditions. Personalised partnerships
between people and professionals
* End-of-life. Greater
dignity and respect at the end of life
[ENDS]