NHS Crisis

urban genie said:
In 20015 George Osborne's spending plans amounted to a cut the real wider health budget by over 20 per cent over the next five years despite headline promises to increase NHS spending.
He systematically reclassified budget funding to cut in ares like the NHS repair fund knocking it down from £4.6b to £3.8b
as well as other areas.
These policies are yet to be reversed and are ongoing.

Monitor, the governments own reporting section warned in 2013 closing the walk on centres would in future years put stress on GP's and A&E.

An not I am not subnormal, thank you very much.
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Plus the 37% cut in funds to local councils to pay for social care which has led to a real terms 25% cut in funding for social care ( the difference being made up by closing baths, libraries and so on or having them manned by volunteers - remember the Big Society? ) So at the front end walk in centres are closed putting pressure on GP's - at the back end social care funding is cut leaving a massive shortfall of care in a ageing population. The result is more attendance at A&E and "bed blocking" ( a spiteful phrase really - these are vulnerable and sick people who have nowhere to go nowhere to be released to ) and the govt has tried to blame the sick and now tries to blame the GP's - deceitful disgusting and total misrepresentation of the real truth. They are now talking about increasing spending........... by allowing local govt to increase the council tax ring fenced for social care. A plague on the lot of them. Its ok they all have private healthcare.
 
mcfcphil said:
I can tell you for a fact - through being heavily involved myself - this isn't always the case and sweeping statements like this just don't progress the issue in any kind of constructive way.

In some cases - as I am involved in - certain services within the trusts are actually being supported by private providers. If anything it is saving the taxpayer money and the trust would be up shit creek in a big way otherwise. So much so that the NHS organisations don't even bid for the contract in the first place.

Bottom line there are great private companies and there are awful private companies. There are fantastic NHS trusts and there are God awful NHS trusts. But the situation is now tribal and pro-NHS people will never, ever recognise the benefits that private organisations can bring. And vice versa.

It's a real shame and until people move this argument on from public/private (which is laughably simplistic) and actually work together towards improving the health service then we'll get nowhere.
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There are innumerable examples of:
Inhouse bids for services being overridden by a nominally cheaper private bid - which is achieved by putting staff on zero hours contracts, cutting service levels, adding bureaucracy levels, and tends to end up saying that they still can't make 'enough' profit on it, so either pay us more or we walk away. So the trust ends up with less service, lower paid staff, but paying more - all due to the law forcing hospitals to work in the 'free market' and all decisions that are made on contracts have to be on only cost, rather than General business sense, let alone patient benefit - the whole point of the original NHS.

Private companies are not there to serve the public, they are there to extract as much profit as possible for the shareholders of the company - it's the actual law. It's not anything altruistic.

As alluded to in a previous post, the amount of invoice abuse by the imposed private supply companies can be staggering.
E.g.
Hospital general maintenance was inhouse - a lightbulb needs replacing, you talk to building maintenance, a worker picks up a bulb from central stores and walks to the light fitting and replaces it.
PFi Hospital general maintenance was privatised - a lightbulb needs replacing, you put a call into the privatised company sites management team located 250miles away, you identify yourself, which hospital you are, what building code, what room code, your authorisation managers code (oh you forgot to get that, please call again when you have obtained it), you then explain the issue. Was it a fault that damaged the building, if so you'll need to notify the buildings PFi owners to obtain permission for assessment to take place before fixing faults can occur, so the PFI building owners can be compensated, (you've not got the PFi company assessment authorisation code signed by your manager? Oh ok, ring back when you have). You obtain all the paperwork signed from your authorisation manager and the PFi building owners, but have some pesky patients to see , you finally ring up and the management office is now closed for the day, oh no... it's the weekend as well tomorrow...no worries you're in for another 12hr shift as well , seeing some more of those pesky patients, as the backlog will never be cleared unless you work extended hours (said the managers as they were heading to their homes in the country for the weekend)... but the management company also doesn't work at weekend.
Still you're in for a 16hr shift on Monday and you can approach that day with joy because you've got all the authorisations lined up now, as long as the pesky patients don't complain about how dark the room seems...
But it's Monday... so every other person is calling the management company, 'your call is important to us..'
Finally you get through, you get the authorisation through, the light will be fixed!... in a week's time, when the 2 management electricians (from 50miles thataway) have driven to central management stores (75 miles t'other way) picked up the lightbulb, driven to the hospital, announced immediate closure of room on health and safety grounds whilst they setup ladders, warning signs and tape off the working area ... but the lightbulb is changed! Success! Then the invoices for all the time management, driving, equipment, cross-billing, labour and post lightbulb deployment safety assessment land on the hospital FD's desk, Amd he looks over his incomings (a few seconds), and he looks at his outgoings - headlined by the PFi 20% of his entire monthly budget - (for a few hours), and wonders whether the hospital could switch to working in daylight hours only...


Yes, some bollox and flight s of fancy in that, compared to the complete truth in my post labelled 'bollox' by chippy, but geez, spend a day working on the frontline in the NHS and it's closer to the truth than being spouted by some of the closeted posters here.
 
The political custard pie throwing started on p1 of the thread. Which sort of sums up the issue. The NHS is important enough to merit constructive cross-party strategic input but that will probably never happen.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Absolute, complete, utter, unmitigated bollocks.
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In you're opinion, I don't share it on this occasion, given the scandels well documented over the years I have little trust in any politicians.

I have no doubt that many go into politics with the best intentions but the further up the ladder they get the more corruption and greed creeps in. You only need to look at the number of politicians that end up on the boards of big industry to realise things are afoot. Again, in my opinion :)
 
Social Care has had piss taking rates paid to them for homecare for the past 7/8 years which in turn has meant carers have been paid awful money.They have now probably told friends to avoid going into care......the damage will take ages to repair even if they throw money at it now.
 
abu13 said:
In you're opinion, I don't share it on this occasion, given the scandels well documented over the years I have little trust in any politicians.

I have no doubt that many go into politics with the best intentions but the further up the ladder they get the more corruption and greed creeps in. You only need to look at the number of politicians that end up on the boards of big industry to realise things are afoot. Again, in my opinion :)
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What I will agree with is that % of cunts certain increases, the higher up the politcal ladder you go. I think the vast majority of regular MPs are decent, hard-working and principled people who went into politics for all the right reasons and who are genuinely motivated to do what's best for their constituencies and the country.

However, in any walk of life, in 650 people you will get some dodgy characters and unfortunately it seems that the dodgy character attributes - backstabbing, self-centred dishonesty - seem to be quite useful in climbing up the greasy pole.
 
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