Managing HIV services in today's NHS
Paul Woolley
pp 2-3
According to the Health Protection Agency, at the end of 2004 an estimated 58,300 adults were living with HIV in the UK, 19,700 (34%) of whom were unaware of their infection. Since the epidemic began, 16,598 deaths in HIV-infected individuals are known to have occurred in the UK. Currently, the number of people living with diagnosed HIV is rising each year due to increased numbers of new diagnoses and decreasing deaths due to antiretroviral therapies.
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Patient involvement in designing HIV services
Paul Woolley
pp 4-5
To make healthcare more convenient for patients, the NHS is increasingly offering services in primary care or in outpatient departments. Since the publication of The NHS Plan in 2000, the NHS has increasingly listened to the patient voice in designing services. There is a statutory duty on the NHS to involve and consult patients and the public in service planning, service operation and the development of proposals for changes. Local authority overview and security committees, made up of elected representatives, are now able to scrutinise local service changes and ensure adequate public consultation takes place.
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Patient self-management within HIV services
Katherine M Coyne and Alan McOwan
pp 6-7
The number of people living with HIV in the UK is increasing steadily, and was estimated to be 58,300 by the end of 2004. There are powerful arguments for enabling and encouraging people with a chronic disease to take an active part in their own clinical care, and HIV services have led the way over the last two decades. Most people with HIV are young and tend to be proactive in looking after their health. The benefits of good management are huge: with timely combination antiretroviral medication, many people with HIV will live into old age.
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London Gay Men's HIV Prevention Partnership
Will Nutland and Paul Ward
pp 8-9
A new approach to the commissioning and delivery of sexual health promotion work with gay men in London has produced real benefits to gay men and to the NHS. At the heart of this approach is a partnership bringing together the principal community organisations working with gay men and the main NHS funders.
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'The most dangerous HIV is undiagnosed'
Ted Hiscock
pp 9-10
For 25 years, HIV and AIDS have been present but the likely prognosis in the UK in 2006 of this disease being fatal is far different from that of the crisis facing many countries in Africa. However, with this fortuitous British optimism, a parallel potentially self-destructive complacency has emerged. Successive governments have failed to substantiate their rhetoric with adequate financial actions. In consequence, the young and sexually active have little care for the consequences of acquiring this disease.
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Exploring Payment by Results
Paul Ward
pp 11-12
As part of its NHS reform programme, in 2003 the government announced its intention to introduce a new system of funding for NHS services, known as ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR). The new system, to be introduced by 2008, is best suited to elective and outpatient care and does not easily translate into long-term condition care. As such, no specific proposals have yet been established for the funding of HIV treatment and there is an opportunity for those working in HIV to influence the way in which the new funding arrangements might be introduced.
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Practice-based commissioning for people living with HIV
Pete Saggers
pp 13-15
Since 1997, the NHS has experienced a considerable amount of process and organisational change. Many of the policies and initiatives were heralded in the 1997 NHS White Paper, The New NHS: modern, dependable, and in the intervening years, policy has developed towards today’s melange of foundation trusts, Payment by Results (PbR) and choice, all neatly parcelled in the policy for a ‘patient-led NHS’.
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