Amount of private work NHS hospitals can take to rise from 2% to 49%

milliemonster

NHS hospitals DO charge anyone outside the EU for their treatment, these people aren't treated for free and insurance details are needed as part of the admission process, however, emergency treatment is given to all and questions asked later, I think the issue lies in that once people return to their homeland, the NHS is not very good at continuing to chase payment and this ought to be addressed

Koicarp

Interesting thread. Our District General Hospital (where I worked for 18 years until recently) has a private hospital in one wing. The construction of the private hospital funded the construction of a new theatre block for use of both parties and public restaurant, as well as a refurb of 6 NHS wards. This was built in 1995/96 so public and private working together is not a new idea.

People keep on saying the NHS is free- it is not, you and I pay for it through taxation. It's free at the point of delivery- but not free and I believe it should always remain free at the point of delivery.

With a clean slate to redesign the NHS I would make all accommodation into single rooms with en suite facilities (we've done this in a couple of wards recently). This would instantly cut hospital acquired infections and would mean we wouldn't need single sex wards.
I would also remove all consultants from management positions and have them leading and supervising teams of doctors. When given control of services their ego's often cause problems. I was at a meeting today where it was said that the consultant has been stopping a service's move from the hospital's clinic to a town centre location (one bus for the whole town) with free parking, for the last two years, apparently he retires in 18 months so we'll remove it then!

Koicarp

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Depends on the criticality of the condition, the type of condition versus number of specialists and a doubtless location/cost.

Where I live waiting times are a lot less than that even for routine matters.

On one occasion (walking critical) I was seen in the morning, saw the consultant in the afternoon and was operated on two days later.

My elderly mother with balance problems, from time to time, takes months between visits.

Some PCT's are not enforcing the 18 week wait (or 4 hour wait in A&E) since the government relaxed it, just after they started cutting back.

olly300

milliemonster wrote: »

NHS hospitals DO charge anyone outside the EU for their treatment, these people aren't treated for free and insurance details are needed as part of the admission process, however, emergency treatment is given to all and questions asked later, I think the issue lies in that once people return to their homeland, the NHS is not very good at continuing to chase payment and this ought to be addressed

If they couldn't leave the hospital or were arrested until they paid their bill by transferring funds/paying with a credit card then there wouldn't be a need to chase them for payment overseas.

Especially as this information would hit the world media.

I know the last time I went to A&E all the form stated is that if I was from overseas and didn't pay my bill this time, next time I may be refused treatment until I paid it.

BTW I'm aware it's not just the NHS who are not good at chasing people from overseas for payment.

k66yla

Looks as if Private Health care is 49% closer to taking over the NHS. We all knew this would happen sooner or later. Will the UK end up actually owning anything? Royal Mail being privatised within the next couple of years, NHS virtually wiped out within 5 years I reckon. Is there anything left to privatise or flog off? Time for me to sign up to Benenden I think.

Koicarp

Cleaver wrote: »

1. Less management. But the public need to get the idea of men with clipboards out of their head as we need less nursing managers, physio managers, radiology managers as well as less 'standard' managers. Every profession in the NHS has been over-professionalising their roles.

2. Leave people alone to do their jobs and stop rearranging everything. Staff don't know thier objectives one week to the next.

3. Although we need less managers, stop assuming that doctors and nurses are always the best people to manage the process of patients moving through a system. The best people to do this are good administrators who spend 100% of their time doing it.

4. Get rid of SHAs, they're not required. The government abolished them but has now done a very quiet u-turn and has allowed the original ten to merge in to four. So same thing but with a massive and expensive merger process over the next two years.

5. Stop these silly national, massive projects. Rather than, for example, telling every NHS organisation that they have to be on the same £10bn BT computer system simply tell them what their system needs to be compatible with and let them procure their own.

6. It's a taboo subject, but the nursing structure isn't fit for purpose. We just don't need all these hugely qualified nurses on £30k, £40k or £50k. Each ward should have a business manager and a nurse manager. The nurse managers makes clinical decisions, the business manager makes business decisions for the ward. Under them you don't need a myriad of senior nurses at various pay grades anymore. That comment will never make you popular though...

7. Here's a biggy. People need to start taking responsibility for their own health and, if they don't, they should be charged. Why should people be able to eat themselves to obesity and expect free treatment? Or smoke 30 a day and expect free cancer treatment? Or drink themselves into oblivion and take up A&E time and a medical bed? It's controversial but I think the next ten years will see the idea of personal health responsibility become a hot social issue in the same way that drinking and driving and recycling have all become social issues in the past couple of decades.

8. Shut hospitals. Care will be provided more and more in people's homes. We don't need all these expensive hospitals.

I agree with most of that but take issue with 6. The hospital I've just left has a business manager for all wards- though they have more than one ward to manage, my old ward shared a business manager with 7 other wards, paediatric theatres and outpatients. In terms of nursing grades the 36 bed ward had:
One Band 7 senior sister, One band 6 junior sister, 20 band 5 staff nurses and 8 care assistants. Bands 7,6 and 5 all make clinical decisions- that's what they are trained to do, but we needed two on a shift so the band 6 was almost entirely clinical just offering supervision and PDR to the care assistants, which doesn't really help prepare her for a future band 7 role. You will note that there are no 50k roles here.
50k roles among "ward nurses" outside london only really occur in ICU/Neonatal units etc where a band 7 nurse is allowed to (required to, some would argue) work 24/7 which enables them to up their 42k (top of band 7) to just under 50k with shift allowances.

kabayiri

This funding option might be the right one, but I reckon it will also make a few people very wealthy.

Change = opportunity = potential profit!

Cleaver

Really interesting thread this and lots of great points.

Maybe someone knows, but I'd guess that the number of 'no-shows' for appointments costs the NHS more than unpaid bills from people treated from abroad. Baffles me why we don't charge for no-shows if the person has no legitimate reason.

silvercar

Cleaver wrote: »

How come no private hospitals do anything after 5pm either? I think I know the answer, but thought I'd get your view first.

Cleaver wrote: »

As someone else has pointed out, that's because the NHS doctors like to work for treble money at weekends at private clinics.

Maybe it is to accommodate their clients??

Cleaver

silvercar wrote: »

Maybe it is to accommodate their clients??

I think we need to be clear between appointments and consultations (clinics) and surgical procedures.

Firstly, all hospitals, private and public, have patients being looked after 24/7 on wards that are staffed 24/7.

Both public and private hospitals will avoid doing nearly all planned surgical operations at weekends due to a number of reasons. If you are putting a child under general anaesthetic, for example, and operating then it's not just the theatre you need as a whole host of staff and facilites will be required for post-op, pre-op and cover in case something goes wrong.

The difference is that private hospitals provide very minor surgery and clinics at weekends whereas NHS don't tend to. The reason is simple, which is that consultants want massive money to do additional work. The private hospitals will pay, the NHS doesn't consider it cost effective. I'm sure that every single NHS hospital would love to provide clinics at weekends as it would increase efficiency, but not at the very high costs that would be required.