Showing posts with label ASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ASA. Show all posts

Tuesday 9 February 2016

A personal view by Nan Tewari on the ASA outlawing the Brent CCG A & E poster






Guest blog by Nan Tewari (in personal capacity):

Last week the Advertising Standards bods issued a ruling telling Brent NHS CCG to buck its ideas up and stick to doctoring rather than spin doctoring.

OK, the ASA didn't actually say that but I do so wish it had!  Last week that intrepid ferreter out of  goings-on in Brent, Martin Francis, broke the story on Wembley Matters LINK, of the Advertising Standards Authority ruling against the 'A & E is only for life threatening emergencies 'posters.

Advertising is supposed to be accurate and advertisers of products and services have an obligation not to mislead.  One wonders whether GPs have now joined the ranks of those estimable professionals of the estate agency and second-hand car sales' worlds (with apologies as always to the honourable exceptions).  

Brent Patient Voice spent weeks corresponding with Brent NHS Clinical Commissioning Group when we first became aware of the posters emblazoned on hoardings and bus stops trying to persuade them to withdraw the misleading advert, to no avail.  Of course, it is bad enough that BPV had to 'become aware' of the posters and that BCCG didn't even bother to consult with us before launching their poster campaign.

To try to give regular readers a succinct bit of context, the relationship of BPV with Brent NHS CCG is akin to that of Philip Grant with Brent Council – enough said.

We pointed out that BCCG's own advice on its website had been uncannily accurate in stating that A & E is for life threatening emergencies AND other serious conditions.  A broken ankle isn't life threatening but I wouldn't hobble into an Urgent Care Centre with one; no siree, I'd take it straight to A & E even if I might have to wait more than 4 hours.  So clearly A & E cannot accurately be said to be for life threatening emergencies ONLY, so even more clearly, some spin doctory type had done some spinning and come up with offending poster.

You may well ask why cash strapped BCCG would COMMISSION (ha ha) said posters. entailing design, printing and pots of glue to stick said posters up.  Perhaps Transport for London was running a cut-price promotion on its bus stop hoardings and some clever COMMISSIONER at BCCG thought they could please their Department of Health masters by using public money to place the blame squarely on the public shoulder for the soi disant A & E crisis.

I say 'so called' crisis precisely because people presenting to A & E are assessed (triaged) at the front desk and then either treated by the on-site Urgent Care Centre or are referred through to the full A & E service, so for the most part, people are NOT accessing A & E in droves, inappropriately.

Anyway, the ASA rules and Brent NHS CCG makes contrite apology.......... well, in a parallel universe perhaps.  Instead, BCCG writes off the entire episode as insignificant because - it arose out of ONE complaint.   The fact that BPV has ELECTED patient reps on its committee counts for nothing.  In fact, BCCG has a proud tradition of wanting to hand-pick the patients it prefers to talk to rather than being respectful of the wishes of Brent patients themselves who have elected their own reps which allows those reps to act independently without fear or favour.

Contrast the BCCG arrogance with the approach of South Worcester CCG whose spokesman said: “We welcome the findings from the Advertising Standards Agency”.  [Ackn. Evesham Journal]

And finally, I leave you with news that BCCG's next advertising campaign will focus on ophthalmology, tackling colour blindness where BCCG hopes to persuade us that black is white.

In keeping with the tenets of this blog, herewith my Declarations of Interest -

Elected Co-chair of Harness Locality Patient Participation Group
Steering Group member of Brent Patient Voice (writing in a personal capacity)
A patient registered with a Brent GP practice
A very rare user of A & E (once falling over in school playground many moons ago)

Nan Tewari

Wednesday 3 February 2016

Brent CCG A&E Ad ruled misleading and potentially harmful in victory for Brent Patient Voice

Congratulations to Brent Patient Voice in succeeding with their complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority regarding Brent Clinical Commissioning Group's poster telling residents to use A & E only for 'life threatening emergencies':

This is the full finding:

Ad

A poster and claims on the advertiser's website www.rightcare4u.org.uk, seen on 5 October 2015:

a. The poster stated "For emergency use only ... A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only ... Other NHS services are available that will help you more quickly. For more information visit: www.rightcare4u.org.uk".

B. The website stated "For emergency use only ... A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only ... If you use A&E when you could get help somewhere else, you are taking NHS staff time away from life-threatening cases. Other NHS services are available that will help you more quickly ...".

Issue

Brent Patient Voice challenged whether the claim "A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only" was misleading and potentially harmful, because patients with serious medical conditions/injuries that were not necessarily life-threatening may be wrongly discouraged from going immediately to their nearest hospital A&E.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

Response

Department of Health trading as Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (BCCG) explained that the ads focused specifically on diverting unnecessary cases away from local A&E departments to more appropriate settings, such as Urgent Care Centres and Minor Injuries Units. They said the primary aim of the ads was patient safety. They had based the core message on nationally available NHS information, in particular the NHS Choices website. They provided an extract from that website which listed some examples of life-threatening emergencies and included loss of consciousness, persistent severe chest pain, breathing difficulties and severe bleeding that could not be stopped.

BCCG said that in contrast to A&E departments, Urgent Care Centres could treat sprains and strains, broken bones, wound infections, minor burns and scalds, minor head injuries, insect and animal bites, minor eye injuries and injuries to the back, shoulder and chest.

BCCG said they had received clinical approval for the campaign. They accepted that there may be a few exceptions, for example, the ones cited by Brent Patient Voice, regarding some specific situations which might require A&E treatment in non-life-threatening situations. They said that was why there were well-established protocols in place in order to safely refer all patients requiring A&E treatment who presented at Urgent Care Centres. They believed the question was one of risk and, in the case of the ad campaign, communicating clearly to a whole patient population about the appropriate use of A&E overall, given the potentially serious and significant impact on those patients who genuinely required A&E treatment by those patients who would be better off (both for themselves and others) reporting to non-A&E services. They said it was important to emphasise that it was not their intention to present misleading information. They were seeking to educate people who might consider going to A&E for situations which were non-life-threatening and who could be treated more appropriately elsewhere.

They offered to remove the word "only" from the claim, in order to provide for those few situations which might require A&E treatment for non-life-threatening emergencies in the context of the A&E service overall being for life-threatening situations, as set out on the NHS Choices website. They believed their amendment was a reasonable and proportionate response to the complaint.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA understood from Brent Patient Voice and BCCG that there were certain medical conditions and injuries that were not life-threatening but nevertheless required treatment in A&E, for example, some broken bones (e.g. ankle), facial injury requiring maxilla-facial surgery, saddle paraesthesia and serious eye injuries. We understood that those conditions and injuries could not be treated in Urgent Care Centres or Minor Injuries Units. We acknowledged that the intention behind the ad campaign was to encourage the appropriate use of A&E services, so as to ensure the proper allocation of NHS resources and patient safety, and was not to deter individuals from accessing A&E services if they genuinely required them. However, we noted that the claim "A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only" was an absolute claim, even though there were exceptions, and we were concerned that individuals presenting with the conditions listed above might be deterred from seeking urgent treatment at A&E as a result of seeing the ads. We considered that the amended claim, which omitted the word "only", did not resolve the complaint because there were certain conditions and injuries that were not life-threatening but which nevertheless required treatment in A&E. For those reasons, we concluded that the claim "A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only" was misleading and potentially harmful.

The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.3 (Social responsibility), 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).

Action

The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told Brent Clinical Commissioning Group to take care not to inadvertently make misleading and potentially harmful claims about the scope of A&E services in future.

Thursday 25 July 2013

Anger and action building on racist vans

The campaign against the 'racist vans' is attracting support across Brent and further afield. Ideas so far include direct action when the vans are seen in the area or we find where they are garaged. Send information via Twitter using #racistvan

Meanwhile:

Inundate the text number on the van advertisement for 'help in getting home' with requests for cabs etc HOME 78070

Complain to Advertising Standards Authority http://www.asa.org.uk/Consumers/How-to-complain.aspx

Complain to advertising agency concerned
http://www.promobikes.co.uk/contact.php Twitter: @promogroupuk

Add comments to Guardian site:


A solictors' form has contacted me re possible legal action and I'll let you know outcomes of any discussions.