Hinchingbrooke Hospital

stonethrower

RenovationMan wrote: »

Too much money is being spent on IT and not enough on primary care and nurse training. You have Graham Devon to thank for that, while he is on here all day the NHS have to employ another person to do his job for him.

There may be too much money spent on IT but from what I saw a lot of the nurses weren't up to much and it had nothing to do with training, they were lazy and rude.

grizzly1911

RenovationMan wrote: »

Too much money is being spent on IT and not enough on primary care and nurse training. You have Graham Devon to thank for that, while he is on here all day the NHS have to employ another person to do his job for him.

No doubt his job flexible and he has to take as long as it takes to do the job working around the core day workers into anti social hours.

Ensuring resilience and reliability of the system when it is most needed.

As most IT support staff have the ability to talk in endless riddles and fix things at the drop of a hat if required, I doubt he gets paid "by the hour" as it were.

No doubt your employer gets value out of the time you spend on here too.;)

grizzly1911

stonethrower wrote: »

My wife was in hospital recently and the quality of care was mixed, from very good to terrible. In the emergency ward they were great. In the general ward the nurses and cleaners were hopeless, from wrong medicine given to her twice and wrong diagnosis once. The cupboard beside my wife's bed had buns in it that must have been there for a week, hard to tell because there was so much fungus on them. In the end I cleaned it myself as it would have been unfair to interrupt the cleaners gossip and tea time.

Can't fault the care we have received from our local GPs or our local hospital. Guess we are lucky where we live.

I am aware of the crass management that goes on behind the scenes though and political games that have to be played. IME not too dissimilar from big corporations.

Kennyboy66

Does anyone actually think that £1.6 million saving is believable if its per annum ?

It strikes me as dubious to say the least.

Why ?

Well this hospital according to their accounts spend roughly £40 million on non employee costs.

I'd imagine this covers all pharmaceuticals / medical supplies (surely the largest part), PFI costs (surely a large part) etc as well as maintenance, heat, light and power etc, etc.

I'd doubt if they spent £1.6 million in a year on paper in total.

If the saving is £1.6 million over 10 years then it is a little more believeable.

If you have ever worked with consultants you would know that they are bigger liars / spinners than politicians.

Kennyboy66

Generali wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that procurement in the NHS is any more scrupulous than procurement in banks.

Almost all public bodies have much more stringent compliance on procurement than private companies - this is what makes the public sector bureaucratic by its very nature.

Equally they have much stricter rules on what can accepted in terms of hospitality, perhaps the exception being Doctors who seem always to have to go to conferences in convenient locations like the Bahamas

sparklefrog

CLAPTON wrote: »

lets take an example of what's wrong with the system

take MRSA as an example


in the public sector it takes a lot of time to identify the problem

- the government acts
- MPs grandstand
- committees are set up and ordered to report within 6 months
- parliamentary committee holds an inquiry
- after 6 months or so targets are set
- government produce 2,000 pages of guidelines
- the government may make extra money available
- hospitals say they are working on the problem
- things get better slowly


private sector
- MRSA isn't really a problem because if it were known that there was a problem in a private hospital it woul go bankrupt with a matter of days/weeks;
so every doctors, nurse, manager etc know that they will face unemployment within a small number of days/weeks so everyone has a massive incentive to keep things clean and manage MRSA properly.


the problem isn't really the people but the system.

I work in the NHS, all patients are swapped on admission and bi weekly thereafter, so cases of MRSA are found (there is a large pool of people within the community who carry MRSA)

Do private hospitals routinely swab their patients? or only when they show signs of infection, as when my mother had some private work done, she was not tested at all, so the private hospitals figures would be very low, but not representative of the true amount of actual MRSA present.

I also know of a colleague who had breast surgery and got MRSA post op (in a private hospital) and she was shifted off to the local NHS hospital in the end to be treated after he wounds broke down.

If you dont look for it, you dont find it.

ILW

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

Almost all public bodies have much more stringent compliance on procurement than private companies - this is what makes the public sector bureaucratic by its very nature.

Equally they have much stricter rules on what can accepted in terms of hospitality, perhaps the exception being Doctors who seem always to have to go to conferences in convenient locations like the Bahamas

What the hell does that mean?

Wookster

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

Almost all public bodies have much more stringent compliance on procurement than private companies.

And they still can't get good value for money!

I say cut out the red tape to a minimum and hold managers to account for the deals they sign up to i.e. if they mess up they sack them.

Kennyboy66

ILW wrote: »

What the hell does that mean?

It means they are legally obliged to obtain more quotes than private sector companies.
It means they are legally obliged to facilitate tenders from EU countries if contact above certain size.
Almost all tenders have to be subject to competition.

Examples would be;

Contract over £2000 - 3 written tenders
Over £75k - invitation to tender by advertisment to at least 4 candidates.

Surely anyone who has worked in anything from a small private sector business to a large one has had more flexible procurement procedures than that.

ILW

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

It means they are legally obliged to obtain more quotes than private sector companies.
It means they are legally obliged to facilitate tenders from EU countries if contact above certain size.
Almost all tenders have to be subject to competition.

Examples would be;

Contract over £2000 - 3 written tenders
Over £75k - invitation to tender by advertisment to at least 4 candidates.

Surely anyone who has worked in anything from a small private sector business to a large one has had more flexible procurement procedures than that.

If that is the case, why are they quite often paying more for the same goods and services as private sector companies.