In an article in the British Medical Journal, researchers highlight the tensions linked to Government health reforms which, on the one hand, seek to cut costs but, at the same time, aim to empower individual patients.
Co-authored by Jill Russell, Senior Lecturer, and Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Healthcare at Queen Mary, University of London, the report considers how patients might be involved in individual drug funding decisions in an age of financial belt-tightening.
The paper suggests that patient involvement at the current time is patchy and that greater patient and public involvement in such decisions is a two-edged sword given that the flip side of greater transparency and ‘empowerment’ is pressure on the sick patient to argue the case for their own treatment.
Professor Greenhalgh has teamed up with Professor Allyson Pollock to teach three new MSc programmes in global health, starting in September 2012. For more information visit www.blizard.qmul.ac.uk/study.
For media information, contact: