Moneylife:
Pune: Friday, 21 November 2014.
The time is ripe to make data of patient survival
rates transparent as the UK has just done.
The health department of UK has just launched ‘My
National Health Service (MyNHS)’, which has brought in increased transparency
including patients’ right to be provided data on health care services including
survival rates for cancer and other ailments. This also has opened up a huge
possibility for India, which has the second strongest transparency law in the
world.
Quoting the UK health secretary, The Telegraph
newspaper states that all hospital (in UK) have been ordered to publish their
cancer survival rates ‘as part of plans to give patients a legal right to
information comparing standards across the country’. The report adds that the
new transparency drive of ‘online publication of GP practices, individual
surgeons, and hospitals, will mean the NHS publishes more comparative
information for patients than any country in the world.”
Indian patients and their families go though a lot
of agony because they are kept in the dark regarding treatment. Only a few have
used RTI Act to procure information which is so hard to get, although it is the
patients’ right to get such information. The UK set up a Committee to go into
the issue of death of patients and other criteria of patient care, following
which has launched a formal campaign on Wednesday.
The website link has all the information the
public needs to know how the MyNHS campaign is going to empower them, as
patients, from today. The press statement says, “This is a new site on NHS
Choices where people can compare the performance of their local NHS hospital,
their care services and their local authority with up-to-date information. The
launch comes 1 year after the government’s response to the Francis Inquiry on Mid
Staffordshire. It is the first time such a wide range of performance indicators
has been made available to the public in this way.
As per the website, from early December, patients
would be able to see the Care Quality Commission’s individual risk rating for
GP practices. And thereafter, details of one year and five year cancer survival
rates would also be made available, online. MyNHS also includes simple,
searchable data on: food quality; staffing; patient safety; mental health along
with many other areas of care, the uploading of which has begun from September.
UK’s first tryst with medical transparency began a
decade ago when noted heart specialist, Sir Bruce Keogh and heart surgery
colleagues achieved dramatic improvements in performance, not through new
targets, but by publishing results for individual cardiac surgeons for the
first time. The press note by the health secretary states, “Transparency is
about patient outcomes not process targets. It uses the power of a learning
culture and of peer review, not blame. The NHS is now blazing a trail across
the world as the first major health economy to adopt this kind of culture.”
The committee’s findings and recommendations are
available on this link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/formal-launch-of-mynhs
There is an urgent need for the present government
to get its health department into launching a similar campaign. While the RTI
Act is in place for the government to begin the move, it should appoint a
committee to submit a study and recommendation report. Do give your feedback on
this vital issue.
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