Nurses for Reform Blog

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.

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.

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.

How much longer will it take for politicians to realise that consumer groups for healthcare will not work if they are developed top down by government organisations?

We have already seen the failure of Community Health Councils, bodies that were supposed to monitor NHS services and give patients a voice.  In fact they were run by a few individuals, usually with their own agenda and axes to grind, ignoring the interests of most patients and were closed down in 2003.  There have also been Local Involvement Networks (LINks) since 2008, that appear to have little effect and remain a mystery to most people.  Now the Department of Health is establishing Local Healthwatch Organisations, which I believe will go the same way as their predecessors.

Only when there is a real market in healthcare will consumer-led organisations flourish and be trusted by users of healthcare services.

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.

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’.

This irrelevant scaremongering nonsense is what we have come to expect from the Royal College of Nursing. It is designed to lead to the public to believe that 100,000 nursing jobs will be lost completely due to the Government spending cuts and healthcare reforms.

However, what is not taken in to account are the jobs for nurses that will be transferred to the private sector.  With reference to my previous post, I would suggest that we may see increased demand for nurses to work in many different healthcare settings.  As for the accusation that less nurses would be trained, surely the time has come for the state to lose its monopoly on nurse training and for us to see a plethora of new entrants to the nurse education market.

I am really pleased to see that David Cameron and Andrew Lansley are continuing to push ahead with their plans for NHS reform.

The realities of how the private sector will work with the NHS are now being explained and, in truth, they are just an extension of what has been before.

I remember when opticians were first allowed to see patients/customers in high street shops instead of NHS facilities.  There was a brouhaha about whether quality would be maintained.  Now none of us think of going to the NHS for our glasses or contact lenses.  Whether we go to SpecSavers, the internet any other of the competing brands, the people who have their eye care free at the point of delivery continue to do so and the rest of us get good quality eye care, a huge choice of frames and, most importantly, great value for money.

When I think back to the 1970s when children who wore NHS glasses were stuck with two choices for frames (horrible pink or blue plastic!) that always broke and were repaired with a sticking plaster, I am so pleased that that is now a distant memory. What I want to see in the near future is the evolution of other NHS services so that NHS customers can receive their healthcare in places that are convenient to them.  Where they don’t have to wait in overcrowded waiting rooms to be seen by doctors who behave as if the patients are an inconvenience and yes, if small, inefficient and poorly functioning NHS facilities are forced to close or are taken over by better performing providers this can only be for the good of the patient.

According to the UK press, this morning Prime Minister David Cameron will announce that many public services, including hospitals, will be run by independent companies, charities and mutual organisations.

For Nurses for Reform this is wonderful news, as regular readers of this blog will know, this is something that we have campaigned since our inception.

Mr Cameron has the future of the NHS in his hands and I urge him strongly not to drop the ball this time.  These reforms really are the only way to improve healthcare for NHS funded patients.

This story, that NHS waiting times will increase due to the government’s healthcare reforms, is blatant scaremongering by NHS managers.

Although it is true that NHS hospitals cannot cope with the demands placed upon them.  Since 2000, thanks to the historic concordat signed by Tony Blair and Alan Milburn, the NHS has been able to use the spare capacity of the UK’s independent healthcare sector to ensure that waiting times do not increase and availability of treatments is not compromised for NHS funded patients.

The time has really now come for many politicians, NHS managers, and clinicians to wake up to the fact the the NHS hospitals, in their current form, will never cope with demand.  It is expensive and does not provide the high standards of care that can be achieved elsewhere with better cost efficiency.