Royal College welcomes competition if in patients' best interests
By Ian Birch
You may have read that the Health and Social Care Bill – the government’s controversial reforms to the Health Service including the GP commissioning initiative – suffered some heavy defeats in the Lords this week.
As a result, many bodies who represent medical practitioners have outlined their positions on healthcare reform, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which is calling for greater parity with physical health care but welcoming competition if it is in patients’ best interests.
Currently, as many of you will know, if your GP refers you to a specialist or clinic for diagnosis or treatment of a physical condition in England, you will be offered a choice of which hospital or clinic and even given the opportunity to book yourself an appointment online if you have internet access.
Contrast mental health, where the only decisions on which mental health team you are allocated to are made by the professionals themselves.
So what else is the Royal College calling for? Well amongst other things, it wants parity of esteem between mental and physical healthcare, restrictions on competition to ensure the interests of patients are put first, and the meaningful involvement of both service users and carers during needs assessments and the commissioning process.
One service user who is also a carer told Mental Healthy: “I welcome the Royal College’s position on greater involvement of service users and carers. It’s something my carers’ support group has been calling for – for some time – and an issue frequently raised by other carers.”
Professor Sue Bailey, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “For the last 18 months, the College has actively engaged with civil servants and parliamentarians in relation to the NHS reforms. However, the results of our latest membership survey clearly show that psychiatrists have not been reassured.
“We have stopped short of calling for the Bill to be withdrawn, but believe that it is wrong for the government to continue without making the significant changes that we and other medical professionals have been calling for over many months. We understand that the government is due to publish a large number of amendments to the Bill shortly. On behalf of our members and patients, we will scrutinise these amendments carefully in order to make an informed decision on whether or not they address the very real concerns of psychiatrists.”
