GPs have been paid for thousands of patients on their lists who have moved practice, died or been forced to leave the country, according to a report by the Audit Commission.
The paper discusses the issue of family involvement in the process of obtaining consent to treatment. Legally, doctors have a duty to inform the patient, and the patient has a right to be informed before making a decision. In this context, however, there is no requirement to involve relatives or to take into account their interests or requests. Yet, findings from in-depth interviews with NHS general practitioners presented in the paper indicate that in reality relatives have a substantial impact on the process of informed consent. Their presence may lead the doctor to provide more information to the patient and help the patient better understand the information conveyed by the doctor. Ultimately, the relatives' involvement enhances the patient's ability to make an informed decision, even though in some cases – when the relative is dominant – this may have a negative impact on the channel of communication between doctor and patient. These findings reflect a relational approach to patien
Doctors' leaders warn situation could diminish patient trust and lead to more NHS services being run by private operators. GPs preparing to take charge of £60bn of NHS funds have been found to have shareholdings in private healthcare firms, prompting alarm about family doctors profiting from direct conflicts of interest.
Survey finds 54% of doctors think the NHS should have the right to withhold non-emergency treatment A majority of doctors support measures to deny treatment to smokers and the obese, according to a survey that has sparked a row over the NHS's growing use of "lifestyle rationing".
When CQC board member Kay Sheldon spoke out against the health watchdog, it immediately began a concerted campaign to discredit her, she tells Nina Lakhani
One in three GPs in clinical commissioning groups are linked to private firms, study finds One in three GPs who are running new organisations that are about to be given £65bn of the NHS's budget also help run or hold shares in a private healthcare firm, a study shows. The disclosure has sparked concern that such widespread conflicts of interest will threaten patients' trust in GPs, who they may see as lining their own pockets out of public funds.
Robert Francis, the inquiry chairman, said that one of his top priorities was for the NHS constitution to be rewritten, making it explicit that “patients are put first” and “everything done by the NHS should be informed by this ethos”. He recommended that the Health Secretary also consider stipulating that NHS staff “put patients before themselves”.
This article examines the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and associated reforms to the National Health Service in England. It focuses on the Act's policy of making the NHS market more ‘real’, by both encouraging and compelling NHS bodies to act as ‘market players’. The article considers whether the reforms are compatible with the constitutional requirements of accountability for the provision of a public service such as the NHS. It argues that the reforms threaten accountability for three reasons: they make the Secretary of State for Health's relationship with the NHS more complex, they create opaque networks of non-statutory bodies which may influence NHS decision-making, and (especially in relation to competition) they ‘juridify’ policy choices as matters of law. Taken together, these arguments suggest that there is force in the claim that the reforms will contribute to ‘creeping’ – and thus unaccountable – privatisation of the NHS.