Thu 10 Nov 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under NHS Reforms
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This story is very much welcomed by Nurses for Reform. The announcement that the independent healthcare provider Circle is to run Hinchingbrooke NHS Hospital is good very news.
The deal, which would see Circle assume the financial risks of making this failing NHS hospital more efficient and would also involve the paying off of its debts, is indeed a positive step forward. However, it is a shame that this is not a full privatisation of the hospital. It a tragedy that Hinchingbrooke will remain in the NHS. It would have been a much better for this hospital to be put in to full private ownership and for the NHS to become simply a funder and purchaser of its services. That said, it is good news that the staff will be given shares in Circle.
Overall, what has been announced today is another step in the right direction, and in this context is generally welcomed by Nurses for Reform.
Wed 5 Oct 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under NHS Reforms
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As the impact of the debt crisis starts to permeate consciousness and people come to understand the extent to which politicians have issued political cheuqes the state is not going to be able to cash, NFR welcomes this move by the GPs of the Haxby Practice in York.
While elite interest groups and ministers will no doubt carry on peddling their egalitarian and statist lies, at least out in the real world there are still honest medical entrepreneurs ready to innovate and chart a way forward.
As states and their welfare-banking systems faultier, our best option is to seek private medical services for the underprivileged and low paid. At this time of looming crisis, the more people who are encouraged to opt out of the NHS the better.
Mon 26 Sep 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under NHS Failure
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Yesterday I was interviewed on the LBC lunch time show to comment on this story . The head of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Peter Carter, has been calling for family members of elderly patients on NHS hospital wards to help provide care, such as helping with eating and going to the toilet.
I made the made the point very strongly that this is not a problem of nurses not wanting to look after elderly patients. I know many, many dedicated, hard working nurses who are as appalled at this situation as the rest of us.
The reason we are in this crisis is because of the system that is the NHS. Nurses for Reform has argued for a number of years that this is the inevitable conclusion of a system that has taken the tax payers money, promised the earth and been unable to deliver, and will continue to be unable to deliver. Peter Carter knows this as do many of our politicians.
This move to have relatives working on the wards is simply privatisation from the inside out and it is not just happening in healthcare. We are seeing it with the establishment of free schools and it won’t be long before something similar occurs with policing and other state provided services.
It is now time for the politicians of all parties to be honest with the british people. The state cannot and never could do it all. Before yet more people die unnecessarily in this failing system the Government must open up the planning laws to make it easier for new market entrants to build and run hospitals to care for NHS funded patients. There must also be a return to the independent sector of all NHS hospitals so that NHS money goes only on the funding of patient care, not the propping up of the crumbling NHS estate. Finally, the Government must allow Doctors, Nurses, Hospitals and Clinics to advertise their services as only by building up brands that are successful and trusted will Britain have a health service that is truly fit for the 21st Century.
Tue 6 Sep 2011
I have long made the point that with reform of human services such as healthcare, generally, the public are way ahead of the Government and the Media. I have also been expecting the market to react accordingly.
Yesterday my patience was rewarded. I received an email from Argos linking to this website, it advertises low cost healthcare insurance and offers purchasers a speedy service, privacy, flexibility and no waiting lists. While the politicians are busy ringing their hands and continue to extol the virtues of the NHS, the people are taking things in to their own hands and looking after their families themselves.
Mon 5 Sep 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under NHS Failure
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This story from today’s Daily Telegraph demonstrates clearly why the NHS cannot and must not be allowed to carry on in its current guise.
Primary Care Trusts (PCT) are apparently asking NHS hospitals to delay seeing patients for many weeks to ration healthcare, enable the fiddling of the balance sheet and lower expectations of the service.
I think that is it fair to say that most people now have pretty low expectations of the NHS, especially when we see stories of NHS failure such as this and rationing such as this!
Fri 19 Aug 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under Public Health
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I have been reading the Public Health White Paper, Health Lives Healthy People: Our Strategy for Public Health in England.
The paper makes much in its introduction of wanting to move away from the Nanny State model of public health management. A paragraph states:
The dilemma for government is this: it is simply not possible to promote healthier lifestyles through Whitehall diktat and nannying about the way people should live. Recent years have proved that one- size-fits-all solutions are no good when public health challenges vary from one neighbourhood to the next.
However, it then goes on for the next 96 pages to tell us why and how by, Whitehall diktat, local authorities, businesses and voluntary organizations are going to implement the nannying agenda for them.
Another thing that I find amazing in this paper is the way that smoking is addressed in the Executive Summary between mental health and some infectious diseases, as if the choice to smoke is an illness to be cured.
Increasingly, people do not trust government, nowhere was this more evident than the debacle over the MMR vaccination. Also, when there is conflicting advice over the number of portions of vegetables we should eat, how much wine we should or should not drink and whether or not butter is good for us, how on earth does the Department of Health think that the public will take its prescriptive initiatives seriously?
Finally, I would strongly suggest to the Department of Health, that it is time to separate national issues such as the management of pandemic influenza, for which I concede that there is a role for government, from life style choice issues which will only be addressed when we have health and welfare systems that promote personal responsibility rather than promising everything to everyone.
Thu 18 Aug 2011
Posted by Helen Evans under NHS Failure
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A report released early this month by a committee of MPs has shown the the NHS Electronic Patient Record Project (EPR) has cost billions of pounds and been a complete waste of time, failing on every count.
The project is being abandoned and individual Trusts are now expected to develop their own record keeping systems.
Thank goodness that the MPs have seen sense and stopped this project before more good money is thrown after bad. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have never been a fan of EPR and wrote this paper with my husband back in 2001.
Tue 16 Aug 2011
This is an interesting story that has been picked up by both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. Due to traumatic experiences or poor service, more and more mothers are opting to pay privately for maternity care rather than risk having their babies in NHS hospitals.
I am aware that at these stories are about middle class people, but it was not so long ago that private maternity care was the preserve of the very rich. I feel sure that as increasing numbers of mothers become disillusioned with the care offered by the NHS, heightened demand will bring down the cost of maternity care and competition will continue to drive the quality of the independent sector. Hopefully, it will not be long before these better services are available to all and reform of midwifery services will continue to be market and customer led rather than waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Mon 15 Aug 2011
The summer holidays are a great time to catch up with reading and this is one publication that I highly recommend.
Titled No need to flinch: The need for NHS reform, it is written by Miles Saltiel and published by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI). It gives an in depth analysis of the NHS using World Health Organisation data as is described as follows on the ASI webiste;
This paper, which analyzes World Health Organization data, suggests that the NHS fails to distinguish itself on either health outcomes or value for money – when ranked against similar countries, the UK is in the lower half of both league tables. Even more depressing are the findings of the annual Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index, which ranks the UK 15th out of 18 Western European countries in terms of healthcare performance from the perspective of the consumer. Such findings surely make it hard to keep insisting that the NHS is ‘the envy of the world’.
