Are the assumptions underlying patients choice realistic?: a review of the evidence.

INTRODUCTION: This paper presents a thematic review of the assumptions underlying patient choice in the NHS to examine who is meant to be making choices in the policy, what choices they are meant to be making and how those choices are meant to be made. DISCUSSION: This paper suggests that policies to increase patient choice require a significant investment in terms of restructuring primary-care services to allow them to happen, as well as to present relevant information to patients, but that patients may not want to make choices about where and what type of treatment they receive for the most part, being content with having a larger say in when they are treated.