Supplementary evidence submitted by the
Healthcare Commission (PPI 107A)
Following our submission to the Committee in
January, you asked me to send a letter setting out the main points
the Healthcare Commission would like to have covered in the legislation.
They are as follows:
1. The LINks should be clearly designated
as networks that facilitate engagement, rather than as
free-standing organisations that represent or speak for
patients and the public. They must be inclusive and they must
reach out to disadvantaged and marginalised groups in the community.
2. To keep this distinction clear, the status
of the LINks should be expressed through duties on commissioners
and providers of services, rather than through rights invested
in the LINks themselves. Each local authority with social services
responsibility should have a statutory duty to set up a LINk.
Commissioners and providers should have a statutory duty to engage
with patients and the public through the LINks.
3. It should be made clear that the Healthcare
Commission has a duty to assess the performance of healthcare
organisations in relation to patient and public involvement, under
Core Standard 17 and related standards. In assessing whether a
trust is complying with the standard/s the Commission will consider
how it is working with the LINk. It would be helpful if the legislation
referred to a "good practice check-list" for effective
engagement with which trusts are expected to comply. This
list is now being drawn up by the Department of Health with the
Healthcare Commission and the National Centre for Involvement.
4. It is not consistent with the current
move towards "light-touch, risk-based" regulation to
expose trusts to multiple inspectors. The healthcare sector is
already seriously concerned about the number of organisations
with the right to visit them. The Healthcare Commission is committed
to involving patients and/or the public (as appropriate) in the
follow-up inquiries and inspections that it carries out as part
of the annual health check. This can provide an alternative means
for patients and the public to scrutinise their local healthcare
organisations, once the forums, with their statutory rights of
inspection, are abolished. It would be helpful if the legislation
could confirm that the Healthcare Commission is expected to
involve patients and the public, through the new LINks, in its
follow-up inquiries.
I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss these
points further with you and your colleagues, if that would be
useful.
Anna Coote
Head of Engaging Patients and the Public, the Healthcare
Commission
12 March 2007
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