By Nick Mann | 14 November 2011
NHS primary care trusts will be banned from placing ‘unfair restrictions’ on patients’ choice of provider for routine operations, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced today.
By March 2012 at the latest, PCTs must stop enforcing minimum waiting times on patients wanting to use a particular health service provider, he said. They also will not be able to cut costs by restricting the number of operations that can be carried out by more expensive providers.
Lansley’s announcement follows the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel’s findings in July that a ‘significant’ number of PCTs were restricting choice and competition in straightforward elective care.
The watchdog concluded that this was affecting the quality of care available to patients and warned that making patients wait longer than necessary could prolong suffering.
The Department of Health today acknowledged that PCTs were operating within spending restrictions that reflected the ‘finite resources’ of the NHS. But, it said, this did not justify restricting choice or activity and insisted PCTs ‘ensure all patients are seen on the basis of clinical need’.
And it said that this would apply to the clinical commissioning groups that will take over from PCTs in 2013 under the provisions of the Health and Social Care Bill. The national NHS Commissioning Board proposed in the Bill would have the power to intervene if commissioners restricted patient choice and provider competition.
Commenting on the proposed measures, Lansley said: ‘This is just the beginning of a range of measures we hope to introduce to make the NHS truly patient-focused. I want a health service that works around patients – not the other way around.
‘PCTs have to manage resources carefully but they must do so without restricting patient choice. That’s why I am taking firm action today and banning these unfair measures imposed on patients.
‘Our plans to modernise the NHS will go even further. The Bill puts a duty on doctors and nurses responsible for designing local health services to protect and promote patient choice as far as possible.’
Responding to today’s announcement, David Worskett, director of the NHS Confederation’s Partners Network, welcomed both the CCP’s original findings and the government’s response to them, which he said endorsed the network’s view that patients were suffering.
He also said it confirmed that the financial justification for imposing minimum waiting times was ‘almost invariably unsound’.
Worskett said: ‘PCTs were in too many cases adopting practices that unjustifiably restricted patient choice and led to patients not receiving the best or most timely treatment. Imposing minimum waiting times was misguided, highly undesirable and almost never in the interest of patients, providers or indeed PCTs themselves.
‘It will be imperative that this is understood and acted on by the new clinical commissioning groups as they take over the responsibilities of PCTs. The same robust sanctions will need to be in place.'
