Brookes, Gavin and Harvey, Kevin (2016) Opening up the NHS to market : using multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine the ongoing corporatisation of health care communication. Journal of Language and Politics, 15 (3). pp. 288-302. ISSN 1569-2159
Abstract
Since its implementation, the British Government’s controversial 2013 Health and Social Care Act has had far-reaching effects on English health care provision, not least the creation of 212 regional practitioner-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which are now responsible for much of the service provision across the country. Taking as an example the website of one of these new commissioning groups, this study shows that multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) can reveal how health and social care matters are being increasingly framed within a corporate and neoliberal set of ideas, values, identities and social relations. Despite government assurances that the Act preserves the (non-commercial) founding values of the NHS, our MCDA provides textual evidence of the influence of neoliberal and commercial discourses operating across CCG websites, which appear to prioritise corporate rather than the practical, day-to-day concerns of patients.