Virgin to advise NHS

Business class: Virgin will advise NHS on customer care

The government has asked Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group to advise the National Health Service how to treat patients better.

Consultants from airline Virgin Atlantic are to visit a number of UK hospitals over the next three months with a brief to come up with ways of improving food, accommodation and atmosphere.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn hopes the airline's high-flying service standards will rub off on the NHS which has been criticised for its lack of consumer-friendliness.

Could hospitals be more welcoming?

He said: "In the past the consultant has been king, in the future the consumer must be king.

"When people get into hospital they want to know that the basics are right - that the wards are clean, the food is good, the care is there.

"That is why I have now asked Sir Richard Branson's award-winning Virgin Group to advise us on how hospitals can be made consumer-friendly."

But Peter Hawker, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, said that the pressures on health service staff were unique.

"Having witnessed [Virgin trains] staff fail to reach their courtesy targets in those circumstances, it will be interesting to see what they achieve in the NHS, where levels of stress and pressure on doctors and nurses are much higher," he said.