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Guidance

NHS Choice Framework - what choices are available to you in your NHS care

Sets out patients’ rights to choice in healthcare, where to find information to help choose, and how to complain if choice is not offered.

Updates to this page

From:
Department of Health and Social Care
Published:
29 April 2016
Last updated:
23 October 2024
Show all updates

  1. In sections 3 and 4 of the main publication we have removed reference to the 2 week waiting time standard and included the 28 day waiting time standard to reflect legislative changes in the cancer waiting time standards that came into force 1 April 2024.

  2. Updated section 4 of 'NHS Choice Framework - what choices are available to you in your NHS care' to clarify that a cohort of patients waiting over 40 weeks for an appointment were contacted on 31 October 2023 to see if they would like to change provider.

  3. Updated contact details for NHS England in 'NHS Choice Framework'.

  4. In the second paragraph of section 8 in the HTML attachment, added 'Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein' to the text that reads 'in an EU country or Switzerland', to reflect changes that came into force on 1 January 2024.

  5. Changes have been made throughout the NHS Choice Framework to clarify what choices are available to patients and when these rights apply.

  6. Details for contacting NHS Improvement have been added to section 13.

  7. Changes have been made throughout the NHS choice framework to clarify what choices are available to patients and when these rights apply. Chapters 2 and 9 have had the most changes made. Substantial changes have been made to chapter 9, section 3, to make it clear that some people will not be able to directly manage a personal health budget and that a decision on if this is appropriate will be made following a discussion with the individual's healthcare professional.

  8. First published.

Applies to England

Documents

NHS Choice Framework - what choices are available to you in your NHS care

HTML

Easy read leaflet 1: choosing doctors

PDF, 664 KB, 10 pages

Easy read leaflet 2: choosing where to go for health tests

PDF, 665 KB, 12 pages

Easy read leaflet 3: choosing your hospital

PDF, 691 KB, 12 pages

Easy read leaflet 4: changing your hospital

PDF, 800 KB, 14 pages

Easy read leaflet 5: having a baby

PDF, 843 KB, 14 pages

Easy read leaflet 6: choosing services in the community and personal health budgets

PDF, 840 KB, 15 pages

Easy read leaflet 7: choosing services in other parts of Europe

PDF, 539 KB, 10 pages

Easy read leaflet 8: taking part in health research

PDF, 553 KB, 10 pages

Details

The framework brings together information about patients’ rights to choice in healthcare, where to get more information to help them make a choice, and how they can complain if they have not been offered choice.

In some circumstances, the patient has legal rights to choice and must be given these choices by law. In other circumstances, they do not have a legal right to choice but should be offered choice about their care, depending on what’s available locally.

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