The new ‘patient entitlements’ announced yesterday as part of Gordon Brown’s attempted relaunch are not enforceable, it has been revealed.
Labour’s own Health Minister, Mike O’Brien, refused to make specific maximum waiting times for patients legally enforceable during the passage of the Health Bill through the House of Commons.
He instead said they should only be set out in an NHS Handbook, which may be ‘rewritten from time to time’ and which should not be enforceable in law.
Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, stressed this meant the entitlements are “merely existing process targets dressed up as new”:
“They add nothing for patients nor NHS staff and are a distraction from what really matters to patients - the end result of their treatment.”
He promised that a Conservative Government would move away from box-ticking and process targets and towards overall outcomes for patients, in order to give people the care they need at every stage of their treatment.
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