Marianne Rigge obituary | Health
My wife, Marianne Rigge, who has died aged 77, was a passionate advocate for NHS patients and a pioneer in creating ways for people to more easily access medical and health information.
The daughter of a GP, she founded a national charity, the College of Health, with renowned social entrepreneur Michael Young, in response to their experiences as patients and in the consumer movement. Young inspired organizations such as the Open University and the Consumers’ Association, which he launched in 1957.
Marianne joined the Consumers’ Association in the 1970s, and she and Young established the College of Health in 1983, with the aim of influencing NHS doctors to put patients’ needs at the center of treatment and care decisions. She ran the charity as a director from Bethnal Green, east London, for 20 years and helped thousands of people. It operated a telephone service with recorded medical information on a range of illnesses and conditions, considered technologically innovative for its time.
Long before waiting times for hospital treatment became a way of judging the performance of the NHS, the College of Health was publishing waiting lists – as a service to patients. At the time, GPs could refer their patients to any consultant across the country, if they were prepared to travel for treatment sooner. Marianne unearthed lists from the House of Commons library to publish the Annual Guide to Hospital Waiting Lists, first published in 1984.
She lectured to doctors and medical institutions, sharing real-life experiences and opinions of patients – supported by case studies – that they often saw only briefly during ward visits.
As a young woman with a French diploma but without a medical degree, Marianne was initially intimidated by the multitude of seasoned, sometimes hostile, practitioners. But she had a gift for writing and speaking, and influenced many people with her eloquence.
She has written articles for several publications, including as a columnist for the Health Service Journal. Television news producers frequently called him when they wanted to hear a patient’s perspective. She was appointed OBE in 2000.
Marianne was the daughter of an Irish doctor, Noel O’Mahony, and his wife, Nora (née Daly) and was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where her father worked. The family later moved to east London and Marianne first met patients while driving her father on his rounds at Forest Gate. She had previously spent time in hospital as a child, when, at the age of seven, she suffered severe burns when her nightgown caught fire.
Educated at St Angela’s Ursuline Convent School in Forest Gate, she then did a year at Marlborough Gate Secretarial College, near Hyde Park, before studying at University College London from 1967 to 1970.
After graduating she worked for the Consumers’ Association as a project assistant for Which? magazine and part-time personal assistant to the President, Jennifer Jenkins, wife of the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins. In 1976, she became Young’s research assistant while he was president of the National Consumer Council.
She married Simon Rigge in 1968 and had two daughters, Katie and Emma, and a son, Thomas, who died of sudden death; they separated in 1982 and divorced in 1989. She and I married in 1990.
Marianne is survived by me, Katie and Emma, her sister Jane and her brothers James and Fergus.
