63. Evidence submitted by the National
Pensioners Convention (PPI 25)
What is the purpose of patient and public involvement?
1. As the NHS is becoming increasingly patient
led, it is essential that the community and users of the service
should be able to make a major contribution in monitoring changes.
Their contribution must be effective and produce results and not
simply be used to pay lip service to the idea of patient and public
involvement. It is also crucial that the effects on patient care
of changes in service provision are monitored.
2. Older people may be particularly vulnerable
to changes in the services provided, especially where small hospitals
and wards for the elderly mentally ill may be closed. It is most
important therefore that patients and the public should have real
influence on the way that the NHS is managed locally.
What form of patient and public involvement is
desirable, practical and offers good value for money?
3. People who have been involved in Patient
Forums and the much missed Community Health Councils have a great
deal of expertise in monitoring change in the NHS, exposing faults
and bringing about improvements. We need a system where those
involved in monitoring changes have a right to inspect services
used by the public, particularly in primary and secondary care.
The system should be properly funded and enable monitors to express
their personal views on local health issues, independent of the
NHS itself. Voluntary organisations with a wide knowledge of the
local community may also provide valuable expertise.
Why are existing systems for patient and public
involvement being reformed after only three years?
4. The NPC still finds it difficult to understand
why Community Health Councils were abolished and the successor
body, the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health,
has also had to go.
5. The arms length review of 2004 recommended
that patient forums were to be made the cornerstone of the new
arrangements enabling patients and the public to influence local
health services. Now they, too, are to be closed down. As the
CPPIH was set up in January 2003, the decision to abolish it must
have been made after little more than a year of operation.
6. The NPC believes that patient forums
could have been improved to provide better patient and public
involvement, which would have avoided the inevitable disruption
of the work of the existing paid and voluntary staff. Older people
in particular simply do not know how they can have an impact on
local health services, either when service changes are proposed
or when they become aware of faults in the present system.
7. We note that there will be no early end
to this uncertainty, when the proposed new arrangements will receive
the necessary legislation only when Parliamentary time allows.
8. The NPC's panel of expert health advisers
would be available to give further detailed oral evidence to the
committee should they wish.
National Pensioners Convention
January 2007
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