13,000 died needlessly at 14 worst NHS trusts – Telegraph

NHS BMW RRV

NHS BMW RRV (Photo credit: kenjonbro)

This is a MUST-READ, truly unbelievable article in the Telegraph by Laura Donnelly and Patrick Sawer. Check it out!

via 13,000 died needlessly at 14 worst NHS trusts – Telegraph.

Interestingly, the article picks up that many of the failings were on the watch of the previous Labour Government. However, most readers will probably blame the 13,000 deaths on David Cameron‘s excessive austerity and botched healthcare reforms.

For much of my career I was an expert in business transformation, in both the private and public sectors. In my professional judgement,   the UK National Health Service (NHS) is way beyond reform. In my view, the UK would get both better healthcare and value-for-money if it scrapped the NHS and replaced it with public healthcare based on global best practice.

Let me reflect this differently as an open question:

Should the UK have a referendum on the replacement of the NHS with a best practice healthcare system based on best practice in other countries?

Any thoughts?

 

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26 responses

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  23. My response should be seen in the light of the fact that the NHS delivers some of the worst patient outcomes in Western Europe,the worst cancer survival rates and some of the worst overall death rates.
    The NHS does not compare with the German system ,the French system or the Italian system and it has far too many managers.

    The NHS also does not generally allow outsiders without NHS experience to work in it or assist it and is therefore a closed shop,a cartel and a medaeval fiefdom all rolled into one.

    I know how it works intimately having tracked 25 of my late parent,s tenants through its processes until they were pronounced dead prior to me arranging their funerals.

    Also having to involve my excellent local MP in getting my local NHS Trust to deal with my late mother,s cateracts and knee replacements in a timely and proper fashion and again with my late father when the trust attempted to send him home early before he could have enough physiotherapy to enable him to walk prior to my sister and I being able to care for him in a demented condition until his final demise in 2006.

    I also attended a “resolution meeting ” with 6 people having complained to the Care Quality Commission about my late father,s treatment and the attempts made by the Trust involved to discharge him early so as to free up the bed.

    His final discharge was made during a blizzard predicted a month before on a long range Met Office weather forecast.

    During the blizzard a line of 22 ambulances waited with their engines running whilst ambulancemen and paramedics argued and physically fought on the fire escapes with nurses who had been instructed to remove the “elderly and confused ” patients from the ward in question even though a letter from the Trust said that in anticipation of the blizzard relatives of elderly and confused patients should bring warm clothing for these patients to wear.

    As the blizzard descended in its full fury each ambulance was literally swallowed up by a swirling wall of snow rather like the scene in the film Dr Zivago starring Omar Sharif where the Russian winter swallows up the forlorn figure in a sea of white.

    At the resolution meeting I attended all 6 people I met denied that these events which I witnessed first hand had happened,denied knowing about the letter and all 6 claimed not to know about the long range weather forecast for a blizzard even though it was in the newspapers,most television channels and in the news available on computers every day of the year.

    13 years ago my younger brother was told by the NHS that his cancerous condition was terminal and that he had 2 years to live.

    I researched and found 42 alternative cures one of which is used routinely in Germany and using one of them my brother is still alive today.

    Other people can tell you more heartrending stories than this including the former newsreader Selina Scott who’s father was left to die on a hospital trolley.

    So whilst people might imagine this sort of thing is a one off I know otherwise and increasingly the public thanks to the tireless work of the Daily Telegraph is beginning to see the NHS for what it is ,a bloated,inefficiently run anachronism in need of urgent reform.

    Therefore the idea that what I said in my post is coloured by my activities in relation to http://www.transactionfocus.com and http://www.fitforprofit.co.uk is nonsense.

  24. There is no need for a referendum on the NHS and if there was one the Government of the day would gerrymander the question so that the result was in favour of doing nothing or would ignore a vote for change by citing unsupportable costs.

    The present system is much worse than the Daily Telegraph report suggests and it kills 120,000 people in botched operations and a further 70,000 through misdiagnoses by well meaning family doctors.
    Currently 20% of the entire NHS budget is spent on payoffs to whistleblowers, lawyers, plaintiffs and vexatious and genuine litigants, gagging orders and tribunal awards.

    Much of what is left is wasted on poor procurement practices, poor working practices and a continual failure to match nursing and medical resources to demand via MANPLAN software,flexible contracts and annualization.

    The cost of the NHS to the nation is however much more than this but Civil Service Mandarins and government ministers of all political types ignore these costs and their implications which are profound and long lasting:

    1)We have the fattest woman in Western Europe and the 4th fattest men and we have both a diabetes and dementia epidemic which threatens the future viability of the NHS and the financial ability of County Councils ,Metropolitan Borough Councils,London Boroughs ,City Councils and Unitary Authorities to exist at all.

    This is down to the NHS’s failure to develop preventative healthcare strategies and the failure of successive Governments to bring in variable tax on foods,crack down on food manufacturers who put too much salt and sugar in food and their failure to regulate the poisons which go into our environment, food and drinking water

    2)The UK medical profession is a cartel that operates as a law unto itself and whether it is consultants at the top who deliberately create patient waiting lists and build up private patient lists or militant Trade Unionists fostering restrictive working practices by nurses,midwives and hospital staff the NHS is failing to improve standards to best in breed levels

    3)Fit Notes and practices in GP,s surgeries are “malingerers and dole bludgers charters” that allow perfectly fit people to waste doctor,s time and extend their holidays,half terms and weekends.
    About half the patients sitting in GP surgeries have no business being there and cause genuine patients to be missed for lack of time

    4)40% of the people in the UK are depressed and largely because of poor diet and drinking on an empty stomach which causes essential vitamins to be removed from the body, particularly Vitamin D.
    Prozac, Seroxat and other drugs are prescribed for the resultant depression and the wizard Civil Servants and Government Ministers see the benefits in the form of VAT and drug and alchohol sales but fail to count the cost to the economy which is £100 billion gbp in lost days from work,lowered Corporation Tax take, lost productivity (we are now 16% behind the average for the G7) and the growing trade gap which has existed since 1982 and has been financed on smoke,mirrors and borrowed money

    THE SOLUTION
    ———————–
    a)Scrap the present system forthwith using France,Germany and Italy to create the dynamic model blueprint

    b)Put Rife machines to German standards in all cancer wards

    c)Variable tax on foods and new requirements on food manufacturers to stop adulterating it with chemicals,sugar,salt and poisons

    d)Make people responsible for their own health and ensure that they eat properly and take vitamin supplements ,exercise and sleep properly

    e)Pay doctors to keep people well rather than just treat the sick and manage patient lists

    f)Merge the Adult Social Care and NHS budgets put surplus council workers involved in Adult Social Care to the sword

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