Best of a Bad Bunch
Health
It is time to put the running of hospitals back into the hands of the medical profession.
The running of the National Health Service has, for too long, been all about meeting targets set by the government. These targets do not seem actually to improve patient care, in fact often the endless paperwork just delays treatment and the achievement of these so-called targets is just meaningless. For example, do you realise that when you are referred by your GP to see a consultant for an operation you may have to wait six months to see him BUT you are not considered to be on the waiting list for the operation until you have seen the consultant? In other words, you wait six months to see the consultant and then another six months for the operation but as far as the government is concerned you have only been, officially, on the waiting list for six months. When you have a painful condition I can assure you that that is a full year you have been waiting, not six months! Again, the system of only being able to book an appointment with your GP by ringing the surgery at 8.30 in the morning, has nothing to do with not keeping pre-booked appointments but is only so that the Primary Care Trust can claim that you do not wait more than 24 hours to see your GP! It is reported that, in the NHS, there are now more managers than beds or to put it another way, fourteen managers for every consultant- just to meet ‘targets’ to make the government look as though they are actually doing something. Not as it is, run by administrators helped by the medical profession. At the moment it seems that paperwork to prove its working is more than important to politicians than actually treating anyone. We believe that most of the doctors and nurses in the NHS do a great job under the circumstances and it is the system that needs changing.
Public/private partnerships
Who’s mad idea was it to try and get the private sector involved in the NHS? The public sector should be focused on patient care, the private sector by definition is focused on profit. The cleaning services should be brought back ‘in house’ so that the hospital has control of this service. We would bring back Matrons who have real responsibility for their wards. With it being outsourced who, in the hospital can monitor the performance in real time? Matron? Oh, there isn’t one! How else will we be able to beat hospital-acquired infections? It can, and is being done in other countries.
Waste in the NHS
Waste in the NHS is real drain on budgets. For example, once a pack of dressings is opened, any unused dressing has to be discarded. Very sensible, but why not just reduce the pack size? reduce waste and unnecessary profit to the supplier. Soap used in hospital is supplied as ‘normal’ size bar and can only be used for one patient, Why not use the little soaps, such as those supplied by hotels reduce waste and unnecessary profit to the supplier Any pills dispensed and then not used, either because the patient dies or because the doctor changes the prescription, have to be destroyed even if the packs are in date and unopened- another waste to the NHS but profit for the supplier.
In this day and age a number of people opt to pay for private care. The NHS should take advantage of that preference. We would encourage a ‘Private Wing’ in every hospital with all profit from that wing being used only to benefit that hospital as a whole. At present the money spent on private care is paid to private companies, we feel that it should be spent within the NHS. Don’t forget, as with nearly everything else, this is OUR money being wasted. The Department of Health (DoH) has spent more than £2.7m in advertising on Google in the past year
The one area where we would ‘waste’ money in the NHS is by abolishing ALL car-parking charges in hospitals. This is the sort of thing that happens when you allow managers to rebadge patients and their families as ‘service users’ and try fleece them at every opportunity. It is little short of iniquitous that friends and relatives should be disencouraged from for visiting people in hospital when they need this support the most and even worse if people are putting off hospital appointments because they are worried about parking charges.