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The NHS doesn’t have a department that makes MRI scanners. They buy them from a privately owned medical supply company. There are long queues of patients all around the company needing scans right now. Private medical companies have fully staffed scanners all around the country right now, so getting the queue down could start next week. Commissioning extra scanners to be built for hospitals all around the country, as well as employing/training staff to use them, in order to get the backlog down would take a considerable amount of time and money, and some patients will die as a result of the delay (as they already are). Surely it’s better to start bringing the queue down to a manageable level ASAP, whilst only commissioning the building of new scanners for areas where they anticipate the greater need in the future? Either way, money leaves the NHS and ends up in private hands.

It’s not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, and in a perfect world we’d have enough NHS facilities in order to be able to manage the workload all around the country, and eventually we will, but right now we don’t, by some distance, and we’ve never had a backlog of people awaiting investigations and treatment like we do now. The main focus needs to be on getting that queue down to a manageable level as soon as possible. Any contract with private medical companies to use their services only needs to be a short-term thing, until the NHS has the capacity to deal with everything going forward. The management of the patients’ treatment plans will remain within the NHS. It’s just buying a service to help get through the backlog. And it will be the same for lots of other investigations that have lengthy waiting lists.

It’s just one way of using private healthcare to the NHS’s advantage in the short term, that doesn’t involve ‘privatising’ any part of the NHS on an ongoing basis. I don’t want to see any part of the NHS privatised on an ongoing basis and would also like to see us take energy provision, water, the railways, etc out of private hands, but with the NHS queue we are talking about people’s health/lives. That has to be a priority and there is an option there to sort it out.

 

yes. Let’s make more of the same decisions that got us into this situation. Short term involvement in PPI during the pandemic was an amazing value for money success story.

You look at railways, water, energy and think what could help the NHS is more private sector involvement?

PFI. Crippling. Seemed like a good idea at the time to leverage the private sector in the short term. Instead stopped hospitals and schools investing for 30 years. When that’s done it’ll be back to crisis with no money to pay for anything.

What could possibly go wrong. There is nothing from Streeting to indicate this is a short term thing to ease capacity. The healthcare budget is finite. If you spend it all in the private sector you have nothing left to improve services or pay and then the next year to use the private sector so you have nothing left to improve

The key to everything is staff retention and recruitment. You also need to be honest with the public and say you are going to aggressively recruit from abroad and massive increase immigration in the NHS if possible That’s the short term measure where you put your money. Not give it to Dido Harding and chums. We are what 3/1/24 and the missis has already had a couple of recruitment approaches from overseas. Without big changes I’m sure at some point soon we will go yup. In the last year of the 7 nurses and 2 medics that she used to work with only 1 other is still in the NHS. That’s your crisis. That’s your waiting lists.

 

Yeah that 200k is just for the pleasure of meeting Wes and his new found zeal for privatisation is completely accidental

 

Having thought about it what we need is more of this.

https://x.com/tarka00/status/1742565891433263371?s=61&t=ZE1j6ndDucny8bLNCR9p9g

 

My old phone can't read twitter. What's the gist if ya don't mind?

 

Please enlighten me regarding this statement (it might reinforce something I've noticed).

 

Certainly! At post #47. I used the word 'mob' as a less than serious shorthand for 'the group of people who collectively oppose' [Keir Starmer]. This seems to have mildly outraged persons at post #51 and #83. I must be getting old!

 

I can’t work out how to post photos on this site. It’s a list of private sector involvement in the NHS and links to the Tory party

 

Pfi is one of the things that passes me off the most crippling the nhs trust close to me and probably many others around the country.

 

Hang on a minute! We’re not comparing apples with apples here! What I’m suggesting is nothing at all like the two scenarios you are comparing it to (one real and one your presumption)

1 - The way the Tories dealt with PPE and the pandemic in general was corrupt and threw away billions of money from the NHS into the back pockets of their mates and donors. This isn’t an example of privatisation though. This is an NHS contract for equipment. The NHS has contracts for everything, right down to the last paper clip and it all goes to private companies. A certain ex-owner of ours had a contract to provide equipment/services to the NHS. But just cos the Tories ****** the PPE contracts up and used it to line their own pockets, doesn’t mean why a different arrangement, if managed properly, couldn’t work.

2 - you’re making a lot of presumptions about what Labour are going to do! If they do start giving contracts and services over to private companies on an ongoing basis I too won’t be happy either, but I’m not going to start complaining about something they haven’t done yet.

What I have suggested is just a short term solution and is purely a suggestion as to how linking up with a private healthcare provider could work in the NHS/British public’s interest if managed properly and I’ve said that it would need to take place alongside plans for bringing in more equipment/staff, but this takes time, so why not get the backlog cleared as soon as possible? I can’t imagine many patients who have been waiting for ages for an investigation saying they would prefer to wait another 6-12 months until the NHS has upped its capacity.

But yes, I totally agree that a quick way of getting staff in would be to reverse the stupid constraints on immigration brought in by Brexit. Brexit didn’t solely cause all the delays and problems in the NHS. The Tories were managing to create a mess all on their own beforehand. Brexit just made it far, far, worse. Certainly the big issue of staffing social care could be solved very quickly by relaxing the EU immigration rules. Brexit is certainly the biggest factor in A&E waits and the inability to get ambulances to people, because of the knock on effect of stripping social care of all its staff, so reverse the stupid EU immigration policy, less people die waiting for an ambulance that never comes. But I can’t think of anything that has happened as a result of Brexit that wouldn’t be better if it was reversed!

 

It’s not just healthcare. The Tories and their donors/families have got their hands all over contracts for everything. They’re nearly as bad as FIFA!

 

Don't vote Labour and help elect the Tories. You'll deserve them.

 

Vote Labour and get Tory policies. You’ll deserve them.

 

I'm happy with the majority of the approaches set out by Labour as articulated in the main Conference speeches. I will gladly vote for them. I'm also happy that Labour are refusing to commit to anything that is uncosted at this stage. To do so would simply be to give the Tories and their media lackeys a stick with which to beat them. To state that Labour will in any way resemble the Eton/Oxford chumocracy smacks to me of naivety.

 

For those who think paying medics a reasonable amount is unaffordable

https://x.com/lbc/status/1742683585591521479?s=46&t=j20zR706pmXrBtdI_7p-NQ

 

I get the argument that not voting Labour, because of the countries political party setup will end up with another Tory government. It will obviously have to be done, but it will be done at great risk.

I do cringe however when I see people making comments like, do you really expect a Labour government to be as corrupt as a Tory one. Well the answer is maybe they will, maybe they won't, who knows. I really don't understand the blind faith people have of one politician over another. There are good and bad in all parties, just that those in government obviously get far more focus as they are the ones making the decisions. In an ideal world, we should be able to trust who is in power. For complete abuse of power and mis-direction of public money, this should result in criminal charges every time, it would be soon weeded out.

I'd like to see us move away from two dominant parties, this red or blue. But the chances of that happening are slim.

 

Not so sure it's blind faith in the Labour party, more a complete certainty of what we will get from the tories, and a desparation to avoid it.

 

That's what I'm saying, I get that people have had enough so change will almost certainly happen at the next election, but what makes you so sure that it won't be more of the same once another party gets control of the purse strings?

 

There are no certainties of course. But I do believe that the Labour party will at least provide a serious Government. There will be policies that people don't like and they'll make mistakes. But I don't think that they will be a gimmick government like we've had since Johnson flooded the Tory Parliamentary party with Brexit idiots.

 

Good question from Beth which wasn’t really answered

https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1742861239892447682?s=46&t=j20zR706pmXrBtdI_7p-NQ