NHS: "No one is safe"

[TallBird1]

Can only comment on the ones in Sheffield. Had treatment in them all and they were all equally polite, helpful and friendly.

[I1L2T3]

Same with Rotherham general the last time I heard (about 5 years ago).

 

The other problem you have with privatising stuff is the frontline staff still have a public sector mentality. You aren't going to change someone over night who has been working there 20 years, hence it's a largly pointless exercise.

 

Sometimes the way things are run at a place look mad when looking from the outside in. When you actually get involved in the place you begin to understand why things are done the way they are. Not always mind, sometimes places are genuinely run in a bonkers way.

[Mr Bloom]

Oh yes, please. Let our healthcare be placed in the hands of private companies, but be paid for by the public sector. Fantastic.

 

The model is so successful. The government are so good at finding the 'right' old boys and girls for the job. A4E have done marvellously for themselves but have failed their service users. At a local level, users are just thrilled with Veolia.

 

Perhaps G4S would like another bite of the cherry, or should I say, sip of the gravy? I can see it now, the unemployed with threats of benefit removal, given 'work experience' on the wards, sleeping in the boiler room, living on patient's leftovers, and being asked to pay for their shiny G4S uniforms out of their own pocket. Wooooh wheeeeeeeh! Bring it on!

[erebus]

The art of denying responsibility, and finding patsies to take the blame. A series of tests were carried out detailed below, which most will never have heard of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

In order to understand why people abuse patients in hospital, it should be noted that to make people sadists is a very easy process. See above experiments. Firstly one does not want nurses, doctors or any of the front line staff to do anything but what they are told. You then need the correct managerial staff, who are ruthless, good a bullying, and preferably sadists. There are many to fit these posts. One then sacks all that complain, leaving the vulnerable to be abused, that is the staff. Hopefully they have families, debts, mortgages, as well as needy children. These are the fodder to exploit. One then tells them to do whatever one wishes them to do, otherwise they will lose their jobs, and destroy their family life. One then makes them work very hard, giving them more work than humanly possible to do, bullying and threatening them to get a move on relentlessly. One must continuously criticise, with the occasional, very occasional praise, so they feel they can actually please the bullying.

In order to do the jobs, they have to cut corners, as their jobs are always on the line, this is hard for professionals at first, but encouraging them at this stage a bit always helps. Make them feel helpless, in the unrelenting tasks they never finish or do well.

This is a recipe for managerial progress, as if anything happens it’s the suckers at the front line who get all the blame. The thing is there are always people looking for work, so if people break down, leave, or are sacked for fun, vengeance or spite, there are more suckers to take their place.

The government want to make an additional 30% of cuts in finance to the NHS in the next few years, so we all know how outraged we will be when it continuously happens. But be glad the managers have earned their pensions and bonuses. That is what they are there for, not that they know much about care, the medical profession, they are there to SAVE MONEY. How are these cuts to be made, well shutting hospitals down of course, because its more efficient that way, so the nurses and doctors can be rushed off their feet and bullied.

 

WHY is the NHS in debt, because it owes money to the PFI where they pay 10X or more for things, because its a way for investors to make a pile at your expense.

[Tony]

Absolutely. It's why I commented on the governance aspect that Tony mentioned.

 

It's why I see a problem with the move to increasingly fragmented and privatised health services. The Tories won't want to increase governance. They will want to cut it and they will want to cut regulation. Why? Because regulation and governance can be barriers to profit taking.

 

The service will end up costing more, delivering less and at even lower levels of quality.

I fundamentally disagree. Totally, utterly and completely.

 

High quality procurement, contract and project management is well within the reach of the public sector. They already do it, albeit in patches.

 

That basis should be worked upon, expanded, and used as the basis for releasing delivery from the public sector shackles that holds it back, costs money, wastes time and kills patients.

 

Your GP is private sector already, as are most of your consultants, and they have been for decades. Is it a problem?

[Rupert_Baehr]

I... I the NHS is fit for purpose or not. If you knew which bits were OK there might be some merit in more options, but the whole thing is a lottery. Incidents of poor standards of care are not statistically isolated, they are rife, we've all heard of somebody that's suffered at the hands of the NHS.

 

The National Health Service, as a service, an institution, a body, is not fit for purpose in my view, but there is plenty of space below for anyone to counter that with a detailed response as to why they disagree if they wish. They can vote "Yes" too.

 

IMO, it's a complex question and few people on this forum are qualified to answer it.

 

Many people could answer the (subjective) question: "How have you been treated by the NHS?" but an objective assessment of whether the NHS (a rather large organisation) is 'fit for purpose' or not isn't so easy to make.

 

If the NHS provides YOU with the services YOU need when YOU want them and does so at a place which suits YOU then no doubt YOU would argue that the NHS is fantastic.

 

If, however, you have to wait a year for a hip replacement, wait 2 or 3 month to see a specialist, travel a hundred miles or more for treatment - or worse still, have a treatment or medication denied - then you might adopt a different viewpoint.

 

Given Robert Francis' comments, then perhaps it's past time that there was an in-depth enquiry into the performance of the NHS.

 

But who will pay? Should the money for the enquiry be taken from NHS funds (thus depriving a large number of people of treatment)?

 

The amount you, in the U/K, pay for health care is significantly less than the amount paid by people in many other countries. Yet you expect to get the same - or better - benefits.

 

The US, Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Iceland, Greece (- Yes, Greece!) Italy, Norway and Australia all pay more as a percentage of GDP than the UK does.

 

If you want the sort of healthcare benefits they get, you may have to dip your hands a bit deeper into your pockets.

 

In Germany, everybody insured under the State Scheme pays 15.5% of Gross income. That figure is fixed by law.

 

That's not 15.5% for NIC - it doesn't cover unemployment or other benefits - it doesn't even cover care in old age [there's another 2% deduction for that.]

 

You pay 15.5% (the figure is dated ... it may even be more now) for health insurance.

[I1L2T3]

I fundamentally disagree. Totally, utterly and completely.

 

High quality procurement, contract and project management is well within the reach of the public sector. They already do it, albeit in patches.

 

That basis should be worked upon, expanded, and used as the basis for releasing delivery from the public sector shackles that holds it back, costs money, wastes time and kills patients.

 

Your GP is private sector already, as are most of your consultants, and they have been for decades. Is it a problem?

 

I agree that the best that the private sector can offer should work in partnership with public services, where appropriate. Nothing wrong with that. The problem so far is that when services are farmed out on a large scale to the private sector there is actually very little proof that services actually improve. Look at A4E and other employment services 'providers'. Look at transport. Look at utilities. Not much evidence of the high quality service provision you describe, just lots of evidence of the public paying through the nose for much worse services than they deserve.

 

But for me the core of the service has to be a public service with its ultimate aim to serve the public, not to serve the interests of directors and shareholders.

 

It has to improve and evolve too of course. I see a regulatory and monitoring framework with real teeth as the way to achieve that rather than a headlong ideological rush into private provision that is not proven.

 

I think consultants that work outside the NHS as well as in it are verging on being parasitical. They gain the vast majority of their experience in NHS hospitals, then when they reach a certain level they use that expertise to enrich themselves in private hospitals spending days of the working week working elsewhere. I don't think that's good.

[Tony]

when services are farmed out on a large scale to the private sector there is actually very little proof that services actually improve.

Just not true. You'd pick me up for cherry picking failure, I'll do the same.

 

the interests of directors and shareholders.

That is precisely what you do when you pop in to see your GP. They are shareholders in a private business.

 

 

 

The answer lies in high quality procurement that demands high quality delivery. Only the private sector can deliver the delivery.

[I1L2T3]

Just not true. You'd pick me up for cherry picking failure, I'll do the same.

 

So where are the successes? Where has the private sector delivered something markedly better?

 

That is precisely what you do when you pop in to see your GP. They are shareholders in a private business.

 

GPs are more like SMEs than the large companies that are looking to hoover up mega contracts from the NHS. It's quite different really. The GP model doesn't scale up to running hospitals with many hundreds of beds on massive campuses. Could your GP run the Northern General which has over 1,000 beds?

 

The answer lies in high quality procurement that demands high quality delivery. Only the private sector can deliver the delivery.

 

You conveniently ignore the fact that many parts of the NHS deliver excellent services already. Other parts don't unfortunately but maybe it could be argued that the NHS can learn from the best bits of itself rather than totally unproven private providers.

[Funky_Gibbon]

Only the first bullet point refers to Stafford. The other three are his comments on the NHS as a whole.

 

No they aren't. The second one is an assumption without evidence and the other two are about the organisations that monitor the NHS, not the NHS themselves. Only a fool or someone who wants to use the situation to their own ideological ends would suggest that what happened at Stafford is an example of the NHS as a whole.