Member News
4th November 2010
The government's vision for high-quality health services through greater collaborative working and patient involvement was championed by health minister Earl Howe at an event in Parliament on Tuesday night.
Earl Howe was speaking at the parliamentary reception for the all-party parliamentary group on heart disease, hosted by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) in partnership with the Cardio and Vascular Coalition (CVC).
The minister commended the joined-up working of the CVC in raising the profile of cardiac and vascular diseases as a whole.
Echoing what was said in the government's health white paper released in July, he noted the importance of co-ordinated care and the ability of people to take ownership of their own conditions.
Betty McBride, head of policy and communications at the BHF and chair of the CVC, reiterated the minster's commitment to a holistic and patient-centric approach.
"The point of the CVC is that it recognises increasingly that a heart patient could be a diabetes patient, and a diabetes patient could be a kidney patient, and the sooner we start to treat a patient's full medical history in that way, the sooner we will be truly patient-centric," she said.
The minister spoke about the work being undertaken with a range of partners, including the BHF, to improve access to cardiac rehabilitation and the quality of cardiac rehabilitation services.
He called it "unacceptable" that a service like cardiac rehabilitation, which delivers the kind of support people want, is unavailable.
Once again reiterating the role patients should play in healthcare, the minister said it was important for people who could benefit from cardiac rehabilitation to understand "what it is they should have, how they should get it, and be able to judge whether it is up to scratch".
The British Heart Foundation has worked with NHS Improvement to develop a patient booklet on this matter, which makes it clear what you can expect and ask for as a patient.
"That sort of collaborative working has to be the way forward because without it we cannot deliver the government's vision, that all partners should play their part in ensuring we deliver high-quality services," Howe said.
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