The NHS

And here we go. Another post from DusThaNo stifling any debate and refusing to engage with or acknowledge the actual issue being discussed.

 

It's a lot more nuanced than that though isn't it.

Healthcare professionals in the NHS are woefully underfunded. The NHS itself is not.

 

You will waste in major organisations- I don't think people will deny it. Not sure I can blame them for thousands of deaths in this pandemic though.

 

Fair enough.

Serious question - what do you reckon to the decision to curtail and delay all of the cancer services referred to in the article because of prioritisation of COVID then? You don't think that was an avoidable policy error? It didn't bother you at the time?

 

It did but also think it was a backs to the wall scenario. Decks were cleared as they had seen what happened in Italy where they were totally overwhelmed

 

'if a few pensioners die, so what'

 

Can you expand by what you mean by this please?

 

A friend went in for prostrate cancer surgery on the day lockdown started. Sprotborough Red went in for a cancer operation during the lockdown period.

So critical cancer services were still ongoing.

 

The NHS wastes a hell of a lot of money.

Especially in areas like middle management.

 

How many work in pathology? Ambulance or Paramedics? Call centres (999 and 111)? Dentistry? Midwifery? Pharmacy? Public Health? Rehabilitation? Even porters and receptionists perform essential work.

Don't necessarily have to be doctors or nurses to perform an essential healthcare role or be seen as a waste.

 

Yes you are correct @BarnsleyReds
Hordes of them.
And it is many of these individuals who's only interest is to serve themselves and enhance their career prospects at the expense of front-line staff.
Rotten to the core many of our trusts.
Check the latest: Shrewsbury and Telford.

 

And yet, it comes out as the best or near best healthcare provider in the world on a cost basis.

 

We're the 13th highest spender in the world, and we're generally ranked around 20th in quality of services in most of the surveys I'm looking at.

So no, sorry, it doesn't.

 

We're a Government in waiting, come the revolution... Up the Reds!

 

The nhs isn’t underfunded, it is just wasteful and has staff in the wrong areas. That’s the rhetoric, yeah?

Too many administrators and middle management.

Well then turn that on its head. Let’s have less of them. The police service complains when their officers have to do paperwork as it means less time for ‘frontline policing’- they’d like administrators to do that part so their officers can do the police work.

So get rid of the back office support in the nhs - so the dr’s and nurses we do have will spend even more time logging and documenting than they already have to, and less time face to face with patients. So we’d need more of them to provide the same service level... not really helpful.

The nhs isn’t as good as it could be, but to call out that it is underperforming not due to understaffing and underfunding, but due to misplacing resources and mismanagement is absolute folly.

1.4 million employees and only c.400,000 dr’s and nurses? That’s a nice headline.

How many ‘healthcare workers’ (formerly known as auxiliary nurses but no longer, so don’t count in the figures) are there? How many paramedics? Ambulance technicians? First responders? Dentists? Dental nurses aren’t on the nursing register so also aren’t in the figures quoted. Porters? Cleaners? Kitchen staff? Laundry?

You make it sound like there are millions of hangers on profiting from the nhs. The only people profiting from the nhs are the private enterprises dropping into being allowed to provide some services. There are plenty of well paid executives in the nhs yeah - they’d be better paid in other industries though. There will be exceptions of course but the service (which a few years ago I contracted for) isn’t obviously awash with highly paid nothing doers. It really isn’t.

What it is, is an essential service, desperately in need of a bit of an overhaul but with no prospect of being able to do it - it would cost billions just to make assessments. It needs better funding. There is absolutely no doubt. It needs investing in and nurturing.

Arguments like tyketical masterstroke’s, and I’m not having a go, there are many, are the ones which will lead to its abolishment and private healthcare. I am assuming that isn’t your motivation, that you just want improvement. But the language is dangerous, it can and will be used to justify things I personally think would be disastrous in the future if this government keeps going further right.

They wouldn’t get away with it currently, as the nhs is the darling of the country, but in a few years, I can see a Tory government start the ball rolling with this, calling out such ‘inefficiencies’ and how ‘carefully selected’ private companies would have a vested interest in being more efficient, blah blah, the odd ‘non-essential’ service here and there becoming paid for, health insurance starting to be marketed to cover these ‘few’ services - the snowball effect of that leading to the complete death of the nhs within a generation without there ever being one decisive fatal blow to speak of.

The nhs doesn’t need our critique to improve. What is required to improve it is well known and barely a person working in it wouldn’t want it.

It isn’t less back office support to pay for more nurses that is required. More nursing staff even in the current structure would mean more nursing admin work. Even more paperwork for them too if they are paid for at the cost of losing the back office support rather than giving more funding.

Same with consultants, gp’s, all dr’s to be fair. They should be treating patients. Some logging/admin work will always be needed by frontline healthcare staff, but the legwork of records etc shouldn’t be left to healthcare professionals.

The nhs is on its knees, the death figures of Covid in this country are terrible. But how you choose the wording of apportioning blame here is inflammatory.

The top level advisors, the health secretary, centrally decided policy, forms part of the ‘nhs’. That is the part which got it wrong. That is the part which didn’t impose lockdown quickly enough.

The local hospitals, dr’s, nurses, etc, are what are seen to a lot of the general public as the ‘nhs’. They have acted under instruction and have done the very best job they could in keeping people alive in the circumstances forced upon them. Delays on some other services? Yes definitely. Will that lead to some deaths from other conditions potentially? I imagine so. Tough call they made but what evidence have you got that they were wrong?

They certainly did not cease cancer treatments and so on. They changed things, and some appointments moved, ok. But get yourself to Weston Park and have a look round, they’re not only treating coronavirus in there.

The nhs is a unique and wonderful thing, it needs protecting and nurturing, not criticising. The faults it has are centrally created in government, and can only be rectified at that level too. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some local nhs authorities that couldn’t improve currently - most could - but these issues are the tip of the iceberg. I’m not saying just throw money at it, but I am saying it needs overhaul and change which will cost a hell of a lot more than is currently afforded to it.

 

If you're blaming policy then blame the policy - that isn't the NHS's fault.

If you're saying the NHS costs too much and is bad, I disagree that it's bad and argue that this is the result of a long-running campaign to turn people against the NHS. Defund it so that it struggles, then call it out for that struggle. The same bunch of 'experts' are regularly trotted out to call the NHS outdated and 'not fit for the 21st century' - these guys are usually people with a vested interest in private healthcare.

Anyway, it's not the NHS to blame for our level of COVID cases and deaths!

 

Is that spending per capita, or in total? Does that differentiate between public and private spending/insurance?

Generally does considerably better than America in most metrics - life expectancy, cost, infant deaths, etc.

 

Per capita state spending. We're 20th per capita in total spend including from private individuals.

 

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Covid infections down 37% on the previous week and record low deaths pretty much daily for whatever day of the week it is. Two people I knew well have passed away during lockdown and neither was Covid related. People this whole time have died in far larger daily numbers than people taken by Covid. It's time to get back to a full time schedule treating the problems the NHS has always seen people for.