The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7320 p505
9 October 2004

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Put patients in driving seat

Patient choice in health care means creating services with patients in the driving seat. This was the consensus of a meeting organised on behalf of leading organisations representing pharmacy held at the Conservative Party conference this week.

Robert Meadowcroft, from the Parkinson’s Disease Society, spoke about the value of expert patients and self-management and suggested that “top-down” services should be removed.

Stephen Dorrell, former health minister, said that the institutionalised boxes of social care and health care need to be broken down, and the political implications of what this would mean to the NHS in the future need to be taken seriously. He also pointed out that there was a school of thought that the more successful the health service was, and the more efficient it became, the less money should be spent on it. This was irrational, he stated. Spending money on health was a sign of an economically successful country.