English: An external shot of St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is an excellent MUST READ article from Kevin Maguire, published in the Mirror.
via Kevin Maguire: David Cameron smears NHS to hide his own failure – Kevin Maguire – Mirror Online.
Whilst I understand all of Kevin Maguire’s argument, I think he fails to recognize that it is the NHS itself which has failed to serve the UK public properly; it is not just down to David Cameron’s catastrophic policy bungling. However, I tend to agree with Maguire that one of the Government’s major policies is outsourcing the NHS in “bite-size-pieces”.
The position of this blog is clear on the NHS. It’s in terminal decline and needs to be replaced with an effective model of public healthcare, modeled on best practice in other countries like Germany, France or indeed Italy.
Let me turn this to an open question:
Do you think it is time for the UK to have an adult debate about replacing the NHS?
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Kevin Maguire is correct about David Cameron’s failings but there is no way in the world that the NHS’s present problems can be airbrushed away as scapegoating.
The NHS has been in a state of financial implosion and meltdown for years and across different political administrations.
Under Margaret Thatcher, an attempt was made to get a grip on costs by appointing managers.This failed because their numbers grew by 189%, wiping out any savings that they might have made through better procurement, better rostering of staff, competitive tendering for hospital building and increased emphasis on preventative medicine.
Under Tony Blair, further attempts at reform were made but management numbers, like Japanese knotweed grew uncontrollably to a figure 225% higher than it was before. Also under him McKinsey consultants did a lot of very expensive work and sat in his office in Downing Street when he agreed to spend £2.2 billion gbp on “Choose and Book”, a computer system for patient appointments which did not work.
Under Gordon Brown, £7 billion gbp was spent on the NHS as a result of the Wanless Review and all of it was wasted by declining NHS worker productivity, higher NI contributions mandated by Gordon Brown and higher wages.
PPP/PFI deals which represented bad value for money for taxpayers were used by both political parties and effectively saddled the NHS with a mortgage on its future, courtesey of a PFI profitability formula devised by Andersen Consulting but never questioned by a single Civil Service Mandarin or Government Minister.
Under the NHS, there has been little or no attempt to develop preventative medicine, see food as medicine or deal with the costs of obesity, dementia, diabetes, depression and the resultant poor productivity, estimated conservatively to be £100 billion gbp a year.
The culture is one of poor performance, lies, obfuscation, excuses, feigned apologies, greed, revolving doors and potentially malfeasance given 8 fold differences in purchase prices of a whole range of items discovered by Sir Philip Green in 1 week’s work, during his 2010 review of Government procurement.
This culture has recently been exposed by consultants, who now say they can solve the A and E crisis by undertaking overtime for more money and by GPs, who are in a substantial number of cases keen on the old idea of charging £25 gbp per visit for a consultation as the present workload is in their words “unsustainable”.
The entire NHS is in need of urgent replacement along with most of its managers and the failed David Cameron, the loser of elections and master of own goals.
It needs to be remodeled on German/French lines and incorporating the best elements of the Italian system along with variable taxes on foods to deal with obesity plus a lowering of sugar, salt and e-numbers content in foods and drinks.
UK doctors need to be trained to US standards of best practice(theirs are higher) and paid differently on the basis of keeping people well.
NHS managers need to be replaced en masse and a new flat structure composed of competent and committed people put in place with none of the previous managers being allowed back as consultants.