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The Commission for Patient & Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) was set up by Act of Parliament in 2003 as an independent body, sponsored by the Department of Health. We have a National Centre in Birmingham and offices in the English Regions.
We have a remit to make sure the public is properly involved in decisions about health and health services. Our focus is to help make health services patient-centred. We also aim to help patients and the public develop independent voices outside the influence of Government and the NHS on all matters that impact on health. We work to facilitate community engagement.
» More About the Commission
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forums are based around NHS trusts. They are made up of groups of volunteers who are passionate about improving local health services and the patients’ experience.
The PPI Forum structure is designed to give each NHS Trust a ‘critical friend’ which works closely with it but represents patients’ views. Forums develop their own work programme, making sure that health services are monitored and it is they rather than institutions or professionals who decide which local health issues are considered.
Forum members are appointed by the Commission and have powers to monitor local services and feed back the views of patients, their carers and relatives on the design and planning of health services to the Commission, to trusts and to local authority health and social services Overview and Scrutiny Committees.
» More About Patients Forums
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“What underpins all our patient and public involvement provisions is empowerment. … All patients and all members of the public have the right to be supported in expressing their views about health issues, to be listened to and to have their views acted upon.”
Hazel Blears MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, NHS Reform and Health Care Professions Bill [Hansard 22 May 2002 col 326]
“Involving the public must be part of a wider, long-term strategy, with clear objectives - and not just a token gesture or a talking shop.
“This is a huge challenge to the entrenched attitudes and ways of working of managers and professionals in the NHS in particular and, indeed, anywhere you are seeking to involve the public in decision-making.”
Speech by Sharon Grant, Chair of the Commission for Patient & Public Involvement in Health to Forum National Convention, 6 June 2005
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