Published: May 19th 2011 - at 9:25 amFive recent NHS scandals you should know about
The Tories’ mismanagement of the NHS is so great that I may have to make this a regular monthly feature.
This is just what I’ve picked up on the wires, and we’ve not even got to the Health Bill yet.
1) 37% cuts over five years
NHS Monitor wrote to the Trusts and applicants on 27th April about its new assessment criteria that will be introduced just 4 days later on 1st May. It tells them they need to cut expenditure by 37% over five years.
2) Inspector Gagged it
A public enquiry reveals that a member of the leader of the Healthcare Commission (HCC) Mid-Staffordshire Trust investigation team was made to sign a gagging order when she left the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the successor organisation to the HCC. She has now used the opportunity of the public enquiry to lambast the new organisation, saying that the CQC as it is now set up would not have the capacity to investigate the mid-Staffs scandal.
3) Random imposition of 15% cut to urgent hospital admissions
GPs are being told to cut unplanned hospital admissions by 15% in a single year, far outstripping original targets and without any plan at all for how this might be done safely.
4) From QOF to COF and back again from the masters of unnecessary reorganisation
The National Instituite for Clinical Effectiveness reveals that the health secretary’s plans to reward GPs for clinical outcomes like cancer survival cannot be implemented, because it is not possible to measure.
The new Commissioning Outcome Framework (COF) will not actually be about outcomes at all, it turns out, but about ‘process’. As such, in all probability we will end up with massive reorganisation just to get back to somewthing very close to the Quality & Outcomes Framework (QOF) system introduced a few years ago under the Labour government.
5) 116,000 people chucked off GP lists to save money
116,000 people, many of them vulnerable, elderly and mentally ill, have been chucked off GP registration lists as Primary Care Organisations ‘data cleanse’ to save cash.
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Paul Cotterill is a regular contributor, and blogs more regularly at Though Cowards Flinch, an established leftwing blog and emergent think-tank. He currently has fingers in more pies than he has fingers, including disability caselaw, childcare social enterprise, and cricket.
· Other posts by Paul Cotterill
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Health
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Reader comments
I get irritated when we keep hearing that Lansley “knows the NHS better than anyone”. I get irritated when I hear Cameron say that, but I get even more irritated when I hear someone like Healey say it. The fact is, Lansley is incompetent. Talk to anyone in health policy and they will tell you that the funding crisis in the NHS has been brewing for 3 years now. The very first thing that a competent incoming Secretary of State would do is mitigate that crisis. Instead, Lansley has spent the last year sitting in a corner playing with his toys.
Stephen Dorrell, the former SoS and chair of the Health Select Committee has said many times that sorting out funding is the most important issue, but Lansley has ignored that warning and made the situation worse by putting ever greater pressures on the NHS. For example, the mixed sex diktat. Yes, I understand the concerns people have over dignity, and Labour also pushed for mixed sex to be phased out. By and large it has been, but there are some hospitals where moving to single sex is just too expensive and consequently, to avoid the fines that Lansley is imposing they have to constantly move patients around the hospital to avoid them being in a bay of the opposite sex. Madness! A competent SoS would have realised that mixed sex is a small price to pay for getting good care.
That reminds me.
“The original vision for the National Programme for IT in the NHS will not be realised. The NHS is now getting far fewer systems than planned despite the Department paying contractors almost the same amount of money. This is yet another example of a department fundamentally underestimating the scale and complexity of a major IT-enabled change programme.
“The Department of Health needs to admit that it is now in damage-limitation mode. I hope that my report today, together with the forthcoming review by the Cabinet Office and Treasury, announced by the Prime Minister, will help to prevent further loss of public value from future expenditure on the Programme.”
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 18 May 2011
http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/npfit.aspx
But don’t expect them to count you if you choose a different way out .
Suicide Indicators, both locally and nationally have been withdrawn (under Labour!) ….as has National Suicide Prevention Strategy…..although a “Brand New Suicide Prevention Strategy ” has been promised by Lib/Dem health minister Paul Burstow to be “published in Spring 2011″
This promise was made to Madeline Moon Labour MP for Bridgend (where there was a cluster of (Uninvestigated!) teenage suicides in 2008) Ms Moon is now also Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Suicide Prevention
Don’t we also need a reintroduction of audited indicators to keep Strategy active?////and When will Strategy be published??????
You should read the following article for another scandal:
http://militantmanager.blogspot.com/2012/01/was-royal-surrey-hospital-employee.html
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
- Liberal Conspiracy
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RT @NHSspy: Been tweeting these for months,now in one place RT @libcon: Five recent NHS scandals you should know about http://bit.ly/iWgL16
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- neilrfoster
The NHS is facing 37% cuts & 4 other facts you need to know on health right now via @libcon http://tinyurl.com/6kbk5w8
- James Hopkins
Conservatives shitting all over the NHS http://liberalconspiracy.org?p=24170 http://t.co/cRYvGgZ http://t.co/yWeSrWQ via @libcon @guardian
- Zoe Stavri
Five recent NHS scandals you should know about. Short summary: government are fucking it considerably already http://is.gd/1RFboy
- Jed
Five recent NHS scandals you should know about. Short summary: government are fucking it considerably already http://is.gd/1RFboy
- IpswichCAB
GPs are being told to cut unplanned hospital admissions by 15% in a single year ~ http://tinyurl.com/6ggz6au
- horizontalresistance
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- Reena Gurung
Five recent NHS scandals you should know about | Liberal Conspiracy http://t.co/5Q6GpSS via @libcon
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