The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136372   Message #3562610
Posted By: GUEST,Musket with straight bat
29-Sep-13 - 06:34 PM
Thread Name: BS: Christian Persecution
Subject: RE: BS: Christian Persecution
I do not know about other countries, but in England, where many of the contributors to this thread reside, religious organisations can fund and manage hospitals but cannot control them on religious grounds.

The Health and Social Care Act 2008 requires registration of what are hospitals by definition of overnight care of health needs, curative or palliative. Non overnight care can also come under hospital care, but the categories can be complicated as to day case and clinic based invasive care. They are then inspected and regulated by The Care Quality Commission where the regulations for equality of access, consent, patient control of care and myriad other regulations are monitored and enforced. Registration is required by both NHS and non NHS bodies. Other bodies, including religious bodies were previously registered under The Care Standards Act 2000. In short, it is 13 years since healthcare on religious grounds has been legally acceptable here.

I can say from what I suppose is a professional view, having been a regulator and now a director of a hospital trust, that it would be extremely difficult to have policies and procedures affecting patient care that either discriminated on religious grounds or didn't reflect upon publicised best practice by bodies such as NICE or The Academy of Royal Colleges. Similar structures exist in other parts of The UK.

I have inspected and held to account religious bodies providing both health and social care, and in my own experience, religion has provided the funding rather than the vision. I speak regularly with our multi faith chaplaincy team about their wish to provide more holistic care to those without religious faith, and to be honest, if our local experience was translated generally, I could see a far more relevant future for those who use faith as their guide in helping society at large.

Some of the people professing faith on this thread show themselves to be incapable of raising their vision to such a level. Hence my dismissal of them as blustering irrelevance.