PCT decisions should be scrutinised locally
Primary care trusts must be held to account for their decisions locally
as well as nationally, according to four pharmacy organisations in their
joint
response (PDF, 155K) to a Local Government Association inquiry in
England. To this end, decisions made by PCTs should be scrutinised by
local councillors
through local authority overview and scrutiny committees, they say.
The Company Chemists’ Association, the National Pharmacy Association,
the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society argue that decisions made by PCTs have an enormous impact on
the health of their local population and on healthcare providers. “It
is therefore appropriate that they are accountable to taxpayers and patients,
in line with their core responsibilities for securing best value,” the
four organisations say.
They suggest that accountability at a national level should involve evaluation
of PCTs’ performance against national targets and benchmarks, including
high-level indicators such as morbidity and mortality, access to care
and health inequalities.
The organisations add that scrutiny by local authorities would compensate
for the “democratic deficit” in the NHS. “We believe
that systems of accountability that sit outside the NHS — including
local authority overview and scrutiny arrangements — are extremely
important. Indeed, we would like to see overview and scrutiny committees
take a still more active role, since councillors, like community pharmacies,
are truly grounded in local communities,” the pharmacy organisations
conclude.
The Local Government Association is examining how NHS services can be
made more accountable to local people through the LGA health commission,
which it set up in November 2007.
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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