Nurses for Reform Blog

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.

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.

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!