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Thanks to Butterworths.co.uk Plans for new right to sue NHS for delayed treatmentNHS patients who wait more than three months for treatment will be able to sue for damages under a proposal floated for inclusion in the next Labour manifesto. Trevor Blythe, head of Beachcroft Wansbroughs� health and social care division, says the proposal `goes with the grain of society.� He tells Stephen Ward why� Patients who have to wait more than three months for treatment would be able to sue for damages under a proposal floated for inclusion in the next Labour manifesto last week by Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary who is still a close confidant of the Prime Minister. Trevor Blythe, head of Beachcroft Wansbroughs� health and social care division, says: "The general approach to NHS care going back over 50 years to when it was set up was that free health care was wonderful. Instead of struggling and wondering how you were going pay the doctor, there is was - free at the point of delivery."He says there has been a shift in expectations since then to a much more rights-based and more consumer orientated society. "So this proposal goes with the grain of society, because you don�t have a right if there is no redress," he says. At the same time medicine�s scope has broadened from the rudimentary care possible with the state of medical knowledge in the 1940s. He says the proposal is creating a new right which penalises the NHS for something other than damage caused to a patient. "In the past patients had to demonstrate that a delay in treatment had caused them harm. Now they would only have to show some possible future harm caused by a delay." The new right would be similar in legal principle to the Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc) Act 2003. Under this legislation local authorities have to compensate health trusts if they `block� a hospital bed by taking too long to prepare the report needed to allow patients to be discharged into the community.Blythe says in the past courts have steered clear of deciding clinical priorities between different types of illness. The High Court ruled last year in the case of a patient seeking reimbursement for the cost of treatment paid for in France to avoid the NHS waiting list, that patients were entitled not to face unreasonable delay. Watts v Bedford Primary Care Trust and the Secretary of State for Health was not based on individual rights, but on the requirement for public bodies to provide equal treatment across the EU under Article 49 of the European Community Treaty and Article 22 of Council Regulation No. 1408/71. The effect was similar. The judge decided provision of medical and hospital services falls within the scope of Article 49, despite strenuous government arguments to the contrary, but the Judge did not set any absolute measures of what would constitute undue delay- it would depend on the circumstances of each case. Is it appropriate that every ailment should be treated inside three months? "In a perfect world, yes, but there may be minor complaints where six months is adequate and you�re not going to go seriously wrong because you had to wait," he says."There has already been a volume of complaint from clinicians that the waiting list targets have meant they have been required to distort patient care priorities in pursuit of waiting list priorities, and that is not going to get any better if there is a financial sanction going with it," he says. (12/03/04) If you have any comments about this or any other news item or feature, please respond via e-mail to: [email protected] If you have any comments about this or any other news item or feature, please respond via e-mail to: [email protected]. Legislative annotations in other services:- Case annotations in other services:-
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