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

Koicarp

headcone wrote: »

What form?I have been taken to A&E around 30 times in the last few years and have never been in any position to fill in any form.

Perhaps you should have waited and seen your GP athe day after.

A&E is for emergencies not the walking wounded,seems you are part of the problem.

A&E stands for Accidents and Emergencies, so it is very much for the "walking wounded"!
Those who stab themselves in the hand when breaking apart frozen burgers, cut their fingers off on the lawn mower or get various items/substances into their eyes should all be treated in A&E and are also capable of walking.
A&E isn't for the person who has had an ongoing problem for weeks,months or even years and just happened to have some spare time to pop in- this is a daily occurrence.

Koicarp

headcone wrote: »

Jumping the queue over the equally as needy but less affluent.

I hope you are proud.

They didn't jump the queue, they entered a different one! If somebody is ill or thinks they are ill, it's no surprise that they will join a shorter queue if it's available to them- I would too and I'm a left wing nurse!
The fact is that the contracts given to Consultants give them great freedom to supplement their already huge income with private work.
I went to a private school a few weeks back (working for the NHS) and heard they had their own Paediatrician, when I asked who it was, it turned out to be the Paediatrician who should be seeing the children on the NHS, as they are in that Dr's contracted geographical and practice areas. Of course it looks good on paper for the private school to have it's very own consultant, and the consultant can earn a few quid on the side. There are no controls on these medical services.
If the NHS was in charge of consultants rather than the other way around, they would be able to get them on contracts which enable the employer to get the best out of them at times that suit the employer.

misskool

headcone wrote: »

Jumping the queue over the equally as needy but less affluent.

I hope you are proud.

No, I merely highlighted what is common practise.


To reform the NHS you have to reform the contracts. Then maybe you'll get something that is "fair" to all.

WhiteHorse

Cleaver wrote: »

Firstly, can I just say that I agree GP surgeries should be moving to 24 hour / 7 day services. Completely agree with that. But hospitals? It makes no sense.

If an engineering firm buys a piece of equipment on a par with, say, an MRI scanner, costing £1m, does it allow that equipment to sit idle? No it doesn't. That machine has to earn its keep - it runs every moment it can and staff work shifts to service it.

Given that hospital scanners are saving lives, it's shocking that the level of efficiency in the NHS is not up to that standard.

WhiteHorse

Koicarp wrote: »

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 ...

Exactly.

Politicians always stress 'free ... at the point of delivery', thus giving the impression that they are dispensing largesse to the peasantry.

They are very keen to avoid the fact it is not free. Why? Because the obvious next question is 'we've paid for it, where is it?', rapidly followed by 'you screwed it up'.

Cleaver

WhiteHorse wrote: »

If an engineering firm buys a piece of equipment on a par with, say, an MRI scanner, costing £1m, does it allow that equipment to sit idle? No it doesn't. That machine has to earn its keep - it runs every moment it can and staff work shifts to service it.

Eh? This is comparing apples with oranges. If an engineering company can run a machine 24/7 in a cost effective way then of course they will. But an MRI scanner isn't a piece of machinery that you can just have a bloke look after, the whole hospital needs to operate so that someone can be scanned. A more accurate analogy would be with a coffee machine. Surely, under your logic, if a coffee shop buys an expensive coffee machine then they should run the coffee shop 24/7 to get the best value? But it wouldn't be best value as people don't generally want coffee at 3am, so you'd lose money. It's the same in a hospital, it isn't cost effective to run an MRI scanner 'every moment it can'.

julieq

It's right to allow 49% of private care in an NHS hospital if and only if that increases the bandwidth available for the publically funded care, and the outcomes are the same or better. I think that is the intention, but NHS management isn't particularly good and it might well become two tier.

Partial privatisation (as is done in France) might be a reasonable thing to consider anyway. What is a bit frustrating about this sort of argument is that the health profession close ranks around some sort of idea that they are untouchable saints. The NHS uses private resources already, so the argument is the extent to which you allow private investment in to improve efficiency. There is some excellent research online which points out that we do poorly in comparison with neighbours and other countries in terms of outcomes against spend.

Kennyboy66

julieq wrote: »

. There is some excellent research online which points out that we do poorly in comparison with neighbours and other countries in terms of outcomes against spend.

where is this research ?

Or is it just Tory propaganda ?

Road_Hog

I think that no one would have a problem with the private sector sat right alongside the NHS. But, we no governments don't tell the truth, if they did, they'd tell us about Mode 4 immigration or that the HS2 rail link is an EU directive and there is no chance that it will be scrapped or they'd fess up and say the proposed change to an 80 MPH motorway limit is not to help business, but an EU directive to bring us into line with the rest of Europe.

I could go on, and this is why I have qualms about this, it's what is known as mission creep and is the most effective way of introducing something. Take VAT, it started life at 8% and is nor 20% and one day will end up at about 23% or 25%, which is the target.

To me, this private sector is the think end of the wedge. They're very good at propaganda, the BBC are very compliant as is the rest of (most) the media. We will get shown images of crumbling NHS buildings and how the private sector is helping to upgrade these. All positive spin until people have been convinced, then you'll have the next private sector taking over parts, then they'll be allowed to charge for certain services and then that list will expand.

The NHS is the holy cow, they can't slaughter it, so it must die a death by a thousand cuts. BTW, I'm not a Lefty, I just don't believe that certain things should be run by the private sector, they have profit as their first priority, not the patient.