This article from the Telegraph is a MUST READ, in my view. Check it out!
via Thousands dying because hospitals are understaffed – Telegraph.
The articles cites new research from Professor Sheena Asthana and Dr Alex Gibson at Plymouth University. Let me quote from the Telegraph article:
Prof Asthana said the shortage of doctors was costing lives. “The health service needs large numbers of staff on the front line to deliver good quality care,” she said.
I hate to say “I told you so” but these outcomes were obvious to me two years ago. Readers of my early blogs will remember that I focused on “slash and burn” cost cutting proposed by George Osborne and the Treasury, compared to more intelligent options for “cost reduction“. From my earlier life, I am an international expert on strategic cost reduction but could not find anybody in the UK who wanted to listen to my views, so I retired overseas and started blogging instead.
David Cameron’s Government has completely failed to address the real healthcare challenges in the UK and its policy with regard to the NHS has been an omni-shambles.
Any thoughts on where healthcare policy in the UK needs to go now to the redress the bungling?
Related articles
Dr Alf's Blog 
Reblogged this on Dr Alf's Blog and commented:
Looking back, this is worth a read. It’s one of our most popular blogs
Pingback: Record number of elderly forced to stay in hospital – Telegraph « Dr Alf's Blog
Pingback: My Top Twelve Blogs – Last Three Months « Dr Alf's Blog
Pingback: NHS is unsafe and inhuman, says director – Telegraph « Dr Alf's Blog
Pingback: NHS negligence claims rise by 20 per cent in just one year – Telegraph « Dr Alf's Blog
Pingback: Dr Alf’s Top Twelve Blogs – last thirty days « Dr Alf's Blog
Pingback: With thousands dying in UK because hospitals are understaffed what next? – John Gelmini « Dr Alf's Blog
BACKGROUND
———————–
The NHS can never keep up with demand partially because the population is much bigger than the
official figures say it is by a factor of 4.5 million.
Secondly, it it not just a question of numbers but also a question of rostering.
Visit any hospital on a weekday morning and you are knee deep in nurses, doctors and consultants, visit at peak times at night and in A and E and you can see the visible scarcity.
95% of us will die of cancer which now affects 1 patient in 2.5, or heart disease but before we do we will undergo in most cases, prolonged and expensive treatments. These treatments represent the most expensive use of doctors time, consultants time and nurses time yet the NHS fails to do some of the most basic things to ascertain why so many patients end up in this state in the first place.
Second, it fails to see food as part of the cure so that recovery rates are slower thus causing the more prolonged use of doctors.
3rd, it does not use the most up to date treatments for cancer and refuses to consider alternatives.
Ronald Reagan refused to be treated in America for his cancer, would never have considered the NHS which has the worst cancer treatment outcomes in Western Europe, but chose to be treated in Germany which has a better health care system and a treatment for cancer involving cooking cancer cells to death–He lived 19 more years but would have died in the UK and his home country after more extensive chemotherapy and the use of doctors.
The Germans re-engineered the Rife Machine to higher quality control standards, installed it in all their cancer wards and use it to cure a range of cancers which in the UK would mean almost certain death preded by the intensive use of doctors.
4th, it pays doctors to treat people while they are sick rather than paying doctors to keep people well.
This combined with the bad eating habits of the UK population as a whole, the failure of people to take responsibility for their own health (diet, exercise, sensible eating, vitamin supplementation, developing a personal philosophy that keeps things in proportion rather than consuming Prozac, Seroxat and other Serontonin uptake drugs), all conspires to make people overweight, depressed and unhealthy).
We have the fattest woman in Western Europe and the 4th fattest men, with a diabetes epidemic to match, which is again labour intensive in its use of doctors and expensive drugs and leads to the explosion in Adult Social Care costs and the benefits bill which all other working taxpayers pay for.
40% of the UK population are depressed and take these drugs which are prescribed by doctors as a result of drinking on an empty stomach, poor diet and living alone after divorce or as a result of having little money with which to engineer a relationship of any kind.
FUNDING
————–
Until 2000 the costs of the NHS were met out of NI contributions but in 1998 as part of an interim assignment to develop a Target Operating Model on Pensions for a leading life insurer I read three letters from actuaries of leading insurers including the one I was working for which basically said the NI fund would be fully depleted and unable to meet the demands placed on it by 2000.
Since then it has been funded out of Petroleum Revenue Tax and under the last Labour Government a plundering of the monies earmarked for “Good Causes”, Petroleum Revenue Tax, Company Car Tax and Road Fund Licence.
Due to the recession Petroleum Revenue Tax receipts fell by £1.83 billion gbp in 2011 and by £2 billion GBP last year.
People tiring of the National Lottery also caused receipts to fall which is why the price of selected lottery tickets has been doubled to £2 gbp.
Salespeople are now given much higher targets and more business is done via the web and call centres thus creating fewer better paid salespeople and ultimately fewer new cars and less income from P11D submissions, (Company cars are now so heavily taxed that for many, they are not worth having) and what companies pay in mileage is also insufficient to cover actual costs so tax revenues for “hypothecation” to the NHS are also down.
This year the latest generation of fuel efficient cars has come on stream, reducing fuel consumption further and creating another black hole for the NHS, the true recipient of money from motorists as opposed to the roads themselves which are riddled with potholes and fit for a 3rd world country.
The car manufacturers have taken all the rhetoric about “Global Warming” and “Climate Change “to heart so that Treasury Ministers who now had a convenient source of revenue have now discovered that the official warnings about this bogus problem have caused them a real one.
Gordon Brown in his day conducted the Wanless Review and gave the NHS £7 billion gbp, paid for out of increased NI contributions. The review did nothing to reduce the 225% increase in the number of NHS managers which occurred during the Blair administration and the 189% increase which happened under Margaret Thatcher before that.
In addition, overall efficiency and productivity went into reverse by 5% as demands on the NHS were increasing and tax relief on Private Medical Insurance was stopped.
LANSLEY NHS REFORMS
———————————–
These were scuppered by the outgoing head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson and by David Cameron who said that it was “necessary to listen to the healthcare professionals”.
These reforms did not go far enough but in effect were never permitted to happen.
WHAT IS NEEDED NOW
——————————
Fixing the problem requires:
–David Cameron to be replaced or at worst come back from Ibeza, his latest holiday destination and start getting a grip and doing his job
–No further involvement by Big 4 consultancies like KPMG and by McKinseys who told the Government to sack 10% of all doctors in any NHS reforms
–Variable tax on foods and clearer labelling
–Strengthening traditional marriage in the tax system (married people live longer, healthier lives than anyone else as evidenced over 1000,s of years of history)
–Stopping unnecessary measures like “Gay Marriage” and anything which makes divorce easier,cheaper and faster
–Reducing NHS manager levels to just 4 from top to bottom
–Developing more expert systems to lessen the power of consultants to create longer waing lists
–Renegotiating the out of hours contract with GP,s and creating more nurse practioners as a way to reduce the need for so many of them
–Introduce flexible rostering using TCS or MANPLAN software
–Improving food in hospitals and schools using the services of celebrity cooks like Delia Smith and qualified nutritionists
–Benchmarking the NHS to global best practice in France,Germany and Italy
–Reducing sugar and salt content in foods
–Teaching philosophy and relationships in schools by people who live exemplary lives and through the churches and religeous institutions for older people as a condition for retaining their tax exempt status
–Promoting Tai Chi, exercise, the use of St John’s Wort (Hypericum)and vitamin supplementation especially for the over 60s
–Reducing national holidays to 4 weeks inclusive of Bank Holidays until productivity rises to best in breed global levels–Currently, people are lazy and unproductive (20th in the world for productivity), which means that we are not creating enough wealth to sustain the present NHS structure
–Merging the Adult Social Care and NHS budgets together, giving the NHS all the money after removing it from Local Authorities after all duplication of management, functions and people are eliminated.Performing aggressive re-enablement on all Adult Social Care recipients where practicable and linking continued benefit entitlement to weight reduction,smoking cessation, moderate drinking,exercise and sensible eating.
–Identifying potential dementia patients using the ESD Toolkit before they become an expensive burden to the NHS and take steps to reduce dementia risk:
—No residential building under aircraft flight paths(antimony in aircraft fuel causes dementia)
—Ban Bisphenol A
—No more aluminium saucepans ,coffee pots ,rotary clothes lines,cars and cooking utensils
—Improve wired broadband
—Develop safer replacements for paracetemol
—Promote good anti oxidants
—Promote walking /gardening where practicable
Simple thought. There is another row brewing because a rare disease can now be treated using a new and very expensive drug. 68 people involved at £250,000 per person per an um. 17 million pounds spent on carers would impact on how many patients?
rt with the chepest options and if the patient doesn’t respond go for more expensive options with a series of approvals. Personally, I struggle to understand the decision-making of NICE