NHS Choices website launched
The Department of Health has launched the new NHS Choices website, replacing the previous NHS.uk website. The new website, which stays at the same http://www.nhs.uk web address, aims to personalise healthcare and provide information that will ‘allow patients to make meaningful choices about when and where to receive their treatment.’ The new website goes under […]
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DH survey finds improvement in patient choice
Almost half of patients referred to hospital by their GP can recall being offered choice, according to the latest results of the Department of Health’s (DH) National Patient Choice Survey. Some 45% of respondents were able to recall that they were offered a choice of hospitals, up 10% from the first survey in May/June 2006. Over 73,000 patients […]
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Poll finds 80 percent want hospital ‘scorecards’ online
An opinion poll commissioned by ‘think tank’ Policy Exchange has found that almost 80% of patients would like more information on how their NHS hospital performs available on the internet. The poll of 1000 patients found that almost a third of people do not know how to find data about how their local NHS services […]
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New NHS information sources unveiled
Two new NHS websites designed to improve information for patients have been unveiled. NHS Choices, to be launched this summer, will offer general information with the aim of making “authoritative and high quality information very much simpler for patients, the public and health professionals to use.” A much more specific internet service offering information about […]
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Hewitt launches ‘Choose and Book’ librarians
Health secretary Patricia Hewitt has launched ten ‘choice’ library pilots. Librarians in the pilots will be trained to help people find and make sense of information about different healthcare providers and "choose and book" their hospital appointment. A DH spokesperson told EHI that the librarians would help people better understand the choices available to them, but would […]
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CfH still sidelining doctors, BMA chair claims
The chairman of the British Medical Association has told his members that “another year has been wasted” in efforts to implement the National Programme for IT. In his keynote address to the BMA’s annual representative meeting (ARM) Mr James Johnson claimed that doctors were being marginalised in all aspects of system reform and that Connecting […]
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