The new NHS?
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The new NHS?
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On the day the Government take the first steps to promote the new Health and Social Care Bill, Eddie Crouch tells us a recent personal experience with the NHS hospital system, and draws conclusions from this. Like all dentists, he wonders if dentistry has already been forgotten in this plan? |
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During the New Year my wife experienced the NHS at first hand. During the afternoon of New Year’s Day she began to experience small changes in her vision in her right eye, in fact it started whilst we were driving to collect our daughter from York Railway Station. We had enjoyed New Year’s Eve in a rented cottage on the beautiful Yorkshire headland that is Flamborough Head. Indeed my wife had spent an hour on New Year’s morning taking photos of the colony of guillemots.
We went directly to York District Hospital as our concern grew, which like York itself on New Year’s afternoon was practically deserted in the modern A and E facility. The greeting banner running in electronic red above the receptionist read “The wait to see a Doctor will be 4 hours”, they must have had many ambulance cases based on the row upon row of empty chairs to generate such a waiting time, or the deterrent message was working well.
We sat down and waited our turn and after about 15 minutes my wife was triaged by the casualty nurse, and we resumed the wait. She was eventually seen by the Consultant some 2 hours into our wait who looked into her eyes and confessed this was not his speciality but would get someone to assist over the phone. Thirty minutes later he returned saying the telephone diagnosis with the Eye Specialist seemed to suggest it may not be a detached retina, but best to come back to clinic in the morning.
The following morning we drove back to Birmingham instead, curtailing our trip, and went straight to a hospital where a specialist was available in A and E at the City Eye Hospital. Once more my wife waited for hours until eventually seen and diagnosed with two retinal tears needing urgent surgery. This was the 2nd of January, a Sunday and normal service was not to be resumed until Tuesday 4th so the best treatment on offer was admission for my wife and for her to lie in a predetermined position so that the gravitational pull on her retina might not worsen. She eventually had her operation on the afternoon of the 4th and thankfully is making a good recovery, but as yet we are unsure of the success as the gas bubble used to retain the retina has not yet gone down to allow vision.
So what does David Cameron mean when he talks about Patient Recorded Outcomes? Is this what he meant when he spoke this week about second rate service when interviewed by Radio 4, which he corrected to being “second best” later in the day? The hospital where my wife eventually was operated on had a beautiful photo perched on each bed showing how the bed, cabinet and all should be presented, and how you might complain if the bed did not appear as the photo, we were not told however how we might complain if my wife had to wait 72hours for her operation hoping all would be well by lying in position A.
David Cameron has reacted to criticism of the “privatisation” of the NHS, telling the critics to grow up.Perhaps he is not as concerned as some GPs that KPMG are “helping” assist GP Pathfinder Consortia in London, such privatisation is surely nothing to concern? Why are KPMG interested? As legislation hits Parliament this week on the NHS Reforms we should all engage the debate and if critical make some noise, we will not be alone.
Birmingham recently opened a fantastic new build hospital (indeed the place where Gordon Brown inappropriately launched the Labour Manifesto); £2.6 billion of private funding that will cost the tax payers of Birmingham £20 billion in repayments never reaching front line services. Those that think the NHS is being or has been privatised should grow up like the Prime Minister wants! The Dental Access money of £1.5million , given to provide their residents with more funding for services has been redirected by South Birmingham PCT to help start paying this debt and disappeared from the “ring-fenced” funds.
There are more questions than answers at present. How for example can a National Commissioning Board carry out the management of NHS Dentistry, and if they can, how exactly will this be cheaper than PCTs? Who will carry out the mid and year end reviews as detailed in current contracts, which total tens of thousands of such meetings? Regional arms of the NCB may form from the cluster PCTs that are collecting themselves together as these changes develop; we may end up managed by exactly the same people we have known for the last 5 years.
Will the NHS change for the better with the proposals, or will the element of blame shift to someone else?
The BMA may be torn apart by conflicting interests in the new powers this Bill will bring as one doctor relies on another holding the purse strings. Perhaps such division of the Trade Union is a hidden agenda ?
The BMA in their press release choose to major on the “massive gamble”.
Like the facts that were thrown at the Dental Profession when Warburton Contracts had a queue of potential bidders, David Cameron extolls the enthusiasm of GPs to be part of the reforms, there are thousands of GP enthusiasts we are told.
When they study the Bill they will discover what comes with such responsibility, such as commissioning service using European Procurement and dealing with and paying for the legal challenges when it all goes belly up. Monitor will insist on competitive tendering as we have seen in dentistry since 2006. The forces to drive down costs and lower wages and questionable quality, should allow the CQC plenty of opportunity to expand.
“Legislation will allow competition to be forced on commissioners, even when they believe the best and most appropriate services can be provided by local hospitals” say the BMA, how familiar does this sound to the complaints of existing NHS Dental Practices for the last 5 years?
It gets more familiar when the BMA say “adding price competition into the mix could also allow large commercial companies to enter the NHS market and chase the most profitable contracts using their size to undercut on price”, Hamish Meldrum might as well be commenting on our recent experiences.
Let’s see how enthusiastic these GP consortia are when all this detail becomes evident to them?
I think the lawyers must be licking their lips.
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