By Sarah del Tufo and Lucy Gaster People experiencing poverty do not influence decision-making and policy. Six grassroots people with direct experience of poverty, and six people in public life were brought together to form the Commission and find out why. The result was a different kind of report, rooted in real experience and in ‘street language’, through a different kind of commission process.
The King’s Fund in a new report ‘Changing Relationships’ calls for a shift in the way in which health professionals and patients interact. The report is based on the Patient Involvement Project, that set out to assess changing relationships between health professionals and patients/clients in a changing health environment.The study found that progress towards patient empowerment, increased patient choice and patient-centred service was not well advanced. Whilst there was evidence of enthusiasm, self-reflection, and innovation among some, there was also a degree of intransigence among other respondents. Change will be difficult without adequate funding and staffing levels. A climate of low morale is also hampering progress. A patient-centred approach will be more difficult to achieve where there is social exclusion.
Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in a vigorous defence of the public finance initiative insists that the new hospitals and schools being built under PFI are being delivered on time and within budget. He said he will not allow unions to have a veto on reform and even more must be done to encourage private sector involvement in the provision of public services.He argued that PFI has delivered on time and within budget, something that public sector-led investment projects seldom managed to achieve. There are more than 400 PFI contracts, worth more than 100 billion pounds in force or in the pipeline.This defence of PFI follows an attack on union objections from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. The unions are accused of putting at risk the benefits to patients, passengers, and school students by calling for a moratorium on the private finance initiative. It was made clear that there would be no backing down and no moratorium.
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