The government is preparing to unleash patient power in the NHS by giving patients' representatives a central role in a "modernisation board" to oversee radical reform of the service. Alan Milburn, the health secretary, will announce plans for the board tomorrow at a final meeting of the advisory teams that are preparing strategy for the national plan for health, due for publication this month.
He is expected to promise patients' representatives a third of the seats on the board, to be known as the national council for the NHS. It will monitor implementation of the national plan and blow the whistle if it is being subverted by forces of conservatism in the health service.
It would be the first time patients have had any direct power over delivery of services in hospitals and primary care providers.
"They will help shape the way care is delivered and ensure the standards patients can expect. Mr Milburn is keen that patients have a big stake in the future of their NHS," a Department of Health source said.
The patients would get up to one-third of seats on the modernisation board. Another third would go to doctors, nurses and other NHS staff.
Mr Milburn is thought to favour giving the final third to managers of the best hospitals, trusts and health authorities given "green light" status - top ranking in the performance tables he proposed.
The modernisation board may be seen as an attempt to mobilise support from the health interest groups that have been contributing to preparation of the national plan.
Mr Milburn is understood to have been impressed by the commitment to reform shown by leaders of the royal colleges and the British Medical Association and wants their support to continue. His advisers maintain, however, that the modernisation board will be more than a device to hang on to loyalty of potential critics.
"Mr Milburn is convinced the radical proposals in the national plan will need equally radical forms of implementation if the ambition of modernising the service is to be realised," the source said.
The modernisation board is expected to have up to 30 members. It will be linked to taskforces overseeing priority programmes of reform.
The taskforces will include "frontline modernisers" in the NHS and outside experts. About 100 people will be appointed to the board and task forces.
Mr Milburn will announce the proposals tomorrow on NHS Day - the 52nd anniversary of the founding of the service. He will present the modernisation board as an example of decentralisation, "depoliticising the NHS and liberating the talents of NHS staff".
Day-to-day management of the service will remain in the control of the NHS executive, under a new health supremo combining the roles of chief executive and permanent secretary at the Department of Health.
The modernisation board is intended to be more than a talking shop and have real influence over how the national plan is implemented. "For the first time patients' groups will have a seat at the table, making sure reforms are implemented," the source said. They are expected to include representatives of the Patients Association, and the Consumer Association.
Patients would have the biggest single voice, alongside representatives of doctors, nurses, other health service professionals and managers.
"In this way he wants to encourage wider ownership of the NHS national plan," the source said.
