Clause 8
Health Bill [Lords]
1:45 pm
Stephen O'Brien (Shadow Minister, Health; Eddisbury, Conservative)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead for moving the amendment. The Minister listened carefully, but he is obviously still struggling with the idea that any kind of subjective patient information should be a part of the data input process, because he made an analogy that the other data on more professional and detailed clinical measures would be part of the ownership of others in clinical practice. I will not press the amendment to a vote, but I hope that our discussion means that the Minister and his officials will have reflected upon the issue by Report stage.
The Government are quite rightly exploring many areas and, as the Minister has admitted, are trying to move from the former, brutish target regime to a much more sensitive outcome measure regime. It is highly likely that, over time, LINks will become one of the key sources in a number of areas where patient outcome measures will be marshalled, understood and, above all, de-atomised from individual patient experience to a point where we can learn policy lessons from the more subjective parts of the patient journey. We recognise that the great thrust will be the objective test of clinical health care and social care outcomes, but the patient reported outcome measures will inevitably be part of that and will need to be input in order to have a full and—to use a word that was used earlier—holistic approach to an account of the delivery of quality in care in its broadest sense. In his report and reforms, Lord Darzi has urged us to look at care, meaning not just health care or social care, but a total care approach.
It would be disproportionate to press the amendment to a vote, but I hope that, by Report stage, the Minister will have reflected upon whether, in the absence of anything in the Bill, there will be enough expectation, as well as discretion under clause 8(5), to enable marshalled, sensible and almost semi-professional subjective patient reports and outcome measures to be part of the input process, which would help in all care.