Hi all,
Interesting article in eBMJ this week.
What do you-all think this will do to the NHS budget? Any impact on
your practice patterns? Think you can maintain current expenditure of
6.5% GDP for NHS under this? Starting to look like some of the sort of
problems we have here...
(HeHeHe)
Phil
4 Bailey Hill Road
Natick, MA, 01760, USA
[log in to unmask]
(508) 650-9097 - voice
(508) 650-9152 - fax
BMJ 1998;317:1339 ( 14 November )
News
UK Human Rights Act will allow challenges to treatment refusals
Clare Dyer, legal correspondent, BMJ
The Human Rights Act received royal assent in Britain this week, paving
the way for patients to challenge the refusal of
medical treatments on cost grounds.
For the first time, British people will have the right to enforce a
range of civil and political rights in their own courts, sparing them
the long trek to the European Court of
Human Rights in Strasbourg. The act incorporates into UK law the
European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a range of rights,
including the right to life
and to respect for private and family life, and the right to freedom
from inhuman and degrading treatment and freedom from arbitrary
detention. Implementation of the
act is certain to bring issues of NHS resources and healthcare rationing
to the fore. Judges' powers under judicial review--the means by which
treatments are
challenged--are currently very narrow but will become much wider under
the act. Ian Kennedy, professor of health law, ethics, and policy at
University College London,
suggested that resource allocation in the NHS might be "the first area
of collision between the courts and the government" once the act is in
force. Patients denied
expensive treatments on cost grounds may invoke right to life arguments.
The same day that the act was given royal assent, three transsexuals
took North West Lancashire health authority to court to try to force it
to fund their sex change
operations. The three will not be able to invoke the act, but only
because it is not yet in force. Implementation is being delayed,
probably until 2000, to allow judges to be
trained and public authorities to review the way they carry out their
functions. Under the act, transssexuals refused funding for surgery
could argue that this breaches
their right to respect for private and family life.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|