NORFOLK: Pay up call on hospital yobs

Pay up call on hospital yobs

Patients who assault NHS staff could be made to pay for their care under radical plans drawn up by a Norfolk MP.

The idea features in a paper released today by North Norfolk MP and Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb that sets out strategies to give patients more power.

Other plans include locally-elected health boards handling decision-making and a tax to fund local health services, offset by cuts in national income tax.

The Department of Health said it was trying increasingly to transfer power to patients and staff.

The Lib Dems are also proposing to create a “patient's contract” that would set down the entitlement of all patients, regardless of where they lived.

The most recent figures show that, at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital from April 2006 to March 2007, there were 86 physical attacks on staff and 71 verbal assaults reported.

This has led to a new scheme which will see those responsible for attacks being

given on-the-spot fines of £80.

Addressing the issue of violent patients, Mr Lamb asked: “If you go out on a Friday or a Saturday night and get very drunk and you end up in accident and emer-gency, and you are foul and abusive to staff who are already over-stretched, then is it right that you should get that care entirely for free, or are there consequences to your actions?

“And I think there is a case for saying that someone in those circumstances should be asked to pay for their care.”

Mr Lamb argued that decisions had to be taken at local level because different areas had different health priorities.

“In today's highly centralised NHS there

is a real democratic deficit, with too many decisions made in Whitehall,” he said.

“Protests against hospital closures and cuts to services up and down the country show that local people do not feel their voices are being heard.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: “More and more, our emphasis is on putting power into the hands of patients and staff to use the increased investment and reforms to deliver a real transformation in the quality of health and healthcare.”

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