At the Continua Health Alliance summit in Boston this week, most of the speakers are talking enthusiastically about the amount of Government momentum for reform of the healthcare system. Keynote speakers from all areas of the medical industry are telling us how things will change.
It’s not a new message, albeit it has been revitalised by the prospect of the Obama billions. The physicians believe that they can heal themselves, or at least the system they work in. So it came as a breath of fresh air to see a posting that popped into my inbox from Joe Macaluso on Real Health Reform. It argues that the only way we will see any real reform is if it’s done by patients, without the support of Congress or the medical industry.
Over in Europe, the EU is running a debate on Consumers and Health, asking for contributions to a seminar in Brussels at the end of the month. I’d been thinking about this for some time and had come to the conclusion that the most useful thing that the EU commission could do would be to look at how to change the regulatory playing field. That’s necessary to let patient-based groups start to take healthcare and even prescribing into their own hands. To achieve that I think we need a Manifesto for Consumer Health, that provides a safe environment for disruptive developments. By coincidence I’d just finished writing my thoughts on that, which I was posting to the EU Consumers and Health site as Joe’s mail came in. After reading Joe’s post, I’ve added a poll asking “Whether you believe that healthcare reform needs to be driven by patients, rather than medics or legislators?” Please go and vote – I’ll post the result in a later blog.
So why do I think we need a manifesto..?