Patients in middle age are to be offered an NHS health check every five years, Gordon Brown will announce today. By 2012, everyone aged 40 to 74 will be entitled to free checks to assess their risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease as part of an extension of patients’ rights being proposed by the Government.

Health checks have been offered to 40 to 74 year-olds in England since April this year, but the new rights are designed to enshrine the policy in legislation before the next election.

As The Times reported last month, the new rights will include pledges on maximum waiting times, with the NHS being obliged to fund private treatment if patients cannot be seen within an 18 week deadline for hospital care and two weeks to see a cancer specialist.

In future, patients could also have rights to choose where they would like to die, to have access to NHS dentistry, or nominal personal budgets to select different types of NHS care if they suffer from long-term health conditions, ministers suggest.

The Conservatives have said that they would abolish the existing targets on waiting times in the NHS, instead using published outcomes such as patient satisfaction and infection rates, to measure the performance of hospitals and GPs.

But the Prime Minister and Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, want targets on waiting times and health checks to become rights in the NHS Constitution as secondary legislation to the Health Bill, which is being considered by the House of Lords.

A spokeswoman from the Department of Health said that the other proposals were subject to consultation and may be implemented only if Labour win the next election.

“We are asking for views on this, it is currently too early in this process to say exactly how this would work in practice,” she said.

Mr Burnham said: “The NHS Constitution lets people know what they can expect and what they can demand. Turning targets into legal rights will empower patients and guarantee them the same high standards of care, regardless of where they live.

“We’re also seeking views on whether there should be a legal right to choose to die at home and on access to personal health budgets to give people power over their own care.”

Personal budgets, which allocate a nominal sum to patients for the costs of their NHS care, and gives them some flexibility about how to spend it, are being trialled for some with chronic conditions.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that the Government was attempting “to use the NHS as a political football”.

“It is the latest in a series of unaffordable and uncosted pledges that have more to do with electioneering than improving the NHS. When patients are referred for treatment they should be able to choose between hospitals on the basis of not only waiting times but also on issues like levels of MRSA infections and the quality of treatment that they will receive. That sort of patient power is the way to truly drive up standards in the NHS.”

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