Who Should We Treat?: Rights, Rationing, and Resources in the NHS - Softcover

Newdick, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019926418X ISBN 13: 9780199264186

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005

The NHS has undergone substantial reform and investment since 1980, yet demand for care still exceeds supply and difficult choices remain between patients. Why is this so? On what basis should these decisions be made and by whom? As patients become 'consumers' of care, Who Should We Treat? puts patients' rights into their political, economic, and managerial perspectives to consider one of the most pressing problems in contemporary society.

Review:

Review from previous edition Where the book succeeds is in its treatment of the legal issues...It deals systematically with the place of both common law and statute in decisions as to who will or will not have access to care. The account of this complex body of law is clear and informative. (British Medical Journal)

It is an incredibly detailed book, littered with appropriate and useful references. (Journal of Community Nursing)

The book is clear, interesting, easy to read and admirably places in context the work of any lawyer in the health field. (Weekly Journal of the Law Society Gazette)

[A] comprehensive and very readable book which highlights the varying and complex relationships that arise between law and the provision of our health services...a welcome and necessary introduction to all those who seek to study health care and the management of its resources, yet might have failed to appreciate that law and health are linked far beyond the scope of medical negligence...Any author committed to analysis of the questions of resource allocation in the NHS sets themself a mammmoth task. Newdick's text is readily comprehensible...Newdick catalogues the issues and demonstrates the urgency of the task and the challenge admirably. (Medical Law Review)

The quality of work in this book is impressive. It provides a thoroughly researched exploration of legal structure of the NHS, which provides an essential addition to the literature on health care law. (Legal Studies)

The book has a remarkably wide scope...The book is replete with wise statements, always made with the utmost confidence and extensively footnoted...All sides could profit from reading this book, which helps remind us of some of the practical perils of too much attention to the bottom line. (New England Journal of Medicine)

the breadth of the text is to be praised and the tensions between the law, patients and resources in the NHS are well described. This book can be recommended to anyone interested in dealing with the practical challenges of rationing resources within the NHS. (Journal of Medical Ethics)

...richly illuminates the trade-offs among the central indcators of a cost-effective health service - access, equity, quality, choice and cost. ...written in a language that is accessible to the medical profession and to the lay public. It also has important observations for health law and ethics. (The Lancet)

Synopsis:

Increasingly, patients are regarded as 'consumers' of medical services, and yet demand for medical care exceeds the resources that are made available for it. How should the NHS manage the dilemmas presented by scarce resources? Who Should We Treat? examines the economic, political, and legal environment of patients' rights in the NHS.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 019926418X
• ISBN 13: 9780199264186
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 304