PATIENTS in East Lancashire want choice from their local health services to be a right, not something to fight for.

Cumbria and Lancashire Strategic Health Authority has published the responses it received after asking the public what choices they wanted from local health services.

Participants were also asked what other improvements could be made to aid those choices.

Hundreds of people across the county responded and said they wanted:

Adequate local services so that patients actually have choice, such as NHS dentistry

Better communication and information without jargon

Skilled staff to help patients make their own decisions

Extra help for people who might find choice difficult, such as people with mental health difficulties or children

To be treated as an individual with dignity and respect

Choice to be a right, not something to fight for.

The responses have been announced as the Government published the results of its national consultation on Choice in the NHS.

The government's Choice programme says that by the summer of 2004, all patients waiting six months for surgery should be given the choice to move to another hospital.

But the Government also wants to expand Choice to other areas of care, for example maternity care, services for children and older people, and mental health.

The Cumbria and Lancashire Strategic Health Authority has now sent its findings to the Department of Health.

Kath Read, chairman said: "My experience as a patient makes me feel that the most important thing is to be treated with dignity, as an equal and to be listened to, as well as having speedy and effective treatment.

"Choice is about giving patients the power to make choices about our own bodies - when and where we are treated, what services we want and expect.

"It will be one of the most radical and exciting changes in the NHS since it came into being in 1948 -- a complete change of culture, putting patients right at the centre, inviting them to take control."