www.informationprescription.info
Guidance
The consultation paper Building on the best: choice, responsiveness and equity – December 2003 - generated 110,000 individual responses. 90% of those responding wanted to be provided with better health information.
The Healthcare Commission has replaced the Commission for Health Improvement. Obtaining feedback from patients and taking account of their views and priorities is vital for bringing about improvements in the quality of care, and keeping the patient at the centre of health services. Patients and carers responding to these surveys want to be provided with more comprehenisve and reliable information about their healthcare.
DH Better Information, Better Choices, Better Health – published December 2004. This guidance puts information at the centre of health and sets out a single national approach to information. The guidance states that all NHS organisations have a duty to provide a range of quality information to their patients and allows them to plan and commission information with confidence and without costly duplication.
There are a number of national work-streams that provide the framework for underpinning this policy guidance and these have the potential for providing cancer networks with much of the infrastructure they need to help them speed up the process for agreeing and implementing patient information protocols locally.
Department of Health – Creating a Patient-led NHS – Delivering the NHS Improvement Plan – March 2005 – This document explains how the NHS Improvement Plan will be delivered. It describes the major changes underway and how some of the biggest changes will be carried forward for a patient-led health service. Chapter 1 includes sections on:
- A patient-led NHS
- What it means to be really patient-led
- Choice and information
- The NHS commitment to patients
- Listening, understanding and responding
- Patient preferences and experiences
- Patient and public involvement
Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services – published by the Department of Health in January 2006, explains in detail the improvements the Government is going to make to health and social care services, why it feels these changes are necessary and the steps it’s taking to make sure they happen. There is a section on patient information. More people will be better signposted to NHS Direct Online and NHS UK as the gateways to health information. By 2008, patients and carers who are living with long-term health conditions will be routinely offered information prescriptions.
Supporting people with long term conditions to self care: A guide to developing local strategies and good practice - published by the Department of Health in February 2006, explains how health and social services can support people with long term conditions to self care through an integrated package which includes information, self monitoring devices, self care skills, education and training and self care support packs. Section 3 covers patient information. Section 5 describes the development of support networks.
The NHS has published guidelines on producing and delivering information as have a number of other national organisations.
In September 2005, the King's Fund published an updated version of their guide Producing Patient Information - How to research, develop and produce effective information resources.
In August 2005, the NHS updated their NHS website guidelines.