Published: 21/02/2002, Volume II2, No. 5792 Page 21
Poor communication is at the root of many NHS problems. It is, for example, often a significant factor in the unsatisfactory nature of much patient experience. Pick any case from any report by the health service ombudsman over the last 20 years and communication - or lack of it - will figure somewhere. There is no more telling characteristic of an unresponsive, backward-looking bureaucracy than an inability to communicate effectively with those it exists to serve.
So the Department of Health's document on the subject in the wake of Shifting the Balance is to be welcomed. It is right to remind in particular the new kids on the block - strategic health authorities and primary care trusts - to attend to communication, emerging as they are from the distractions of reorganisational upheaval.
But that effort will be self-defeating if it is perverted into recruiting an army of overpaid spin-doctors whose role is faithfully to echo and amplify messages from Whitehall to the greater glory of ministers. Sadly, much of the NHS communications function in the past has seen its duty as little more than this, cowed by Richmond House into presenting every cut as an efficiency saving. Concentrate on revolutionising the way the NHS communicates with its patients, not on misguided attempts to manage the news.
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