NHS

Why was I given a blood test a couple of weeks ago when all i was there for was the result of my MRI?
Jobsworth told me *everyone had one*?

How could this fraud carry on for 4 years
I’ll tell you how: it’s not their money.
Having worked in a nationalised industry I can tell you that they have no regard as to where the money comes from.
And, yes, I do know that they aren’t all alike.

One small example; for an outpatient appointment I was sent four letters - two not necessary, but what caught my attention was that all letters consisted of two A4 sheets of paper, the second with only ' Ms blah blah, Out Patient Appointments' at the top of the sheet.

There was plenty of room to move the text up two lines and therefore send only one sheet; a few months later I had a repeat of this situation, and I had therefore had sixteen sheets of paper sent when four would have been quite enough. Multiply that right across the out patient costs for just one hospital, and given the paper probably comes from a very expensive source, savings on that one small thing, if anyone bothered to press backspace twice, could be three quarters of the paper budget. But who cares?

I think you've nailed it there. I was just thinking the other day after DH cancelled an "Ascenti" physio appointment he'd been waiting for since MAY!!! As his prob had been sorted-mostly by me and my trusty TENS gizmo! I have also cancelled my appt with them as my issue was rsi(self diagnosed) from messing about on my tablet too much during lockdown? but BOTH. Appointments were....wait for it.....on phone! Yep! Maybe these new physios have X ray vision, or a hotline to our very souls.....? I thought then that the deathknell has already sounded. We cannot continue with a business model created in the days when life expectancy was maybe mid-late 40/50s ? And women had babies at home, and the cure for a stiff joint was "run it off!" We've changed, all of us, time to re hash the idea of 'free:' healthcare, cos it's not! GPs are fast becoming redundant as a service all they do is print off a script or refer us on to someone who DOES know what's wrong with us! And many (not all by any stretch) do not a lot for their £100k/pa

I'd like to know why consultants can't do NHS work but CAN do private work.

And.....my old bonuses to be in gym most afternoon s with his child when we were also ther a few years ago, I thought that strange, so! I rang surgery and asked to speak to him, only to be told he's out doing house calls .....really? Who's house then-his own! I had JUST left him splashing about in pool with little 'un.....unless his doppelganger?

#old GP !!! where the hell's 'bonuses' come from????

Bankhurst, I'm often astounded to hear what people can, and do, believe. There's a truly frightening level of childlike ignorance out there.

Still, it's easily explained by people choosing to believe a short and simple explanation - often something they've heard.

Then they can dismiss further thought on the whole subject (problem solved, as far as they're concerned) and carry on with their simple, little, deluded lives.

BBbevan

A daughter of a friend worked for the NH S and was made redundant. A month or so later she was hired on a contract ( more money) to do exactly the same job. Enough said !

And so many large organisations do this now.

It’s not just the NHS sadly.

I too worked in the NHS and your sister is so right . It’s such a shame as our beloved NHS is being badly abused .

In the 70's I had a friend who was a p.a. for a NHS manager.
She freely admitted she was paid top whack and did nothing
most days . I worked briefly as a p.a. in the BBC North H.R.
office and left before the month was up, the boredom had
me knocking my head against the wall!

Your sister is spot on. Terrible wastage also in all sorts of areas. I have worked there and seen it.

I found that very interesting. Having worked in a school for 30 years as a TA I know that money that’s given from the education dept. for special needs children didn’t always get used for that.

spabbygirl

Maybe she does have a point, you won't see much evidence of lavish spending in the frontline staff, but what I think really excessive spending is huge amounts on private health providers like Serco etc. who pay consultants figures like £10k a day. the service would be better and cheaper if it were all in-house, as Labour plant to do

Labour expanded PFIs which were introduced by the Conservatives - they didn't reverse them.
Another disappointment.

Of course some management is needed.

However, I have seen at first hand the frustration of medical staff, ward sisters etc who are perfectly able to make the same decisions they had been making competently for years but then had new managers put over them in charge of decision making about their wards.

I’ve got to agree with your sister. I think we’re got too many on crazy stupid wages and not just in the NHS look at footballers bankers etc list goes on. Yes ppl deserve a wage to fit the job but often wonder who makes up their wages.

It's very easy to look at other people's jobs within any organisation and wonder what they do, how they qualify and whether they work hard. They may think the same about your job. What to me is worse is the appointment of consultants who charge exorbitant fees and also
bring their colleagues in.

Management should be managing these issues then.

I used to work for a mental health organisation (part of the NHS) and I did all our finance work.

We weren't a clinical team but more an education team, we sat between the Department of Health and the Trusts who deliver care to the public and we educated them on how we wanted MH services to look and be rolled out, long before MH became 'fashionable'.

Amongst other things we produced official documents and ran conferences, which can be expensive but we justified every penny.

Knowing we were spending public money I was always conscious of making sure we got the best value possible. In the 11yrs I was there we never once received a Freedom of Information request but I knew that anyone could ask what we spent or cash on, so I was rigorous with recording exactly what we'd spent and could tell anyone anything from how many pens/pencils we'd bought in a year, why and how much each one cost, through to the breakdown of costings for any given conference or even staffing costs because I was aware that anyone could ask at any time.

Every organisation, public or private, has rules governing how money is spent, tendering processes, specific people with authority to sign off on purchased, 3 quotes system etc and as much as I didn't have the final say in these things I was heavily involved and could block any purchase if our Standing Financial Instructions (financial rules) were not being adhered to.

Even though I say so myself, we did a great job, I know this because if we hadn't, MH wouldn't be getting the attention it does now, but my whole team was made redundant because David Cameron said at the end of 2010 that the NHS didn't need so many 'managers' and that the trusts could run themselves. What a lot of good that was! Health authorities were disbanded and because the trusts couldn't do what the HAS had done for them, the Dept of Health had to introduce another new body to do it for them after having just paid out £millions in redundancy payments.

Just a quick follow on from my above post, many of my team had in excess of 24yrs service which meant they got 2yr pay (1 month per year of service was, at the time the maximum redundancy payout), many were earning £50-60k/yr, they walked away with this lovely big payout, set themselves up as consultants and came back to the NHS as consultants a week later earning anything between £400 and £800 PER DAY!

Bankhurst, some 'interesting' comments above! The real point, though, (surely plainly obvious) is that the NHS needs far more money right now. It will continue to cost more into the future, as our population increases - and lives longer in poor health and old age.

Your sister is right, and what about the fraud that goes on in the NHS ?

Just like local government. We went through 'Business Transformation' In an office of six teams each with a Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader to oversee 4 plebs. Then the main Manager of the whole office with Deputy Team manager. Then bringing is a new computer system(third one in ten years) Consultants on a thousand pounds a day and heyho it went 'live' and a tremendous amount of employees were overpaid so they created a vacancy for an 'Overpayment manager' you couldn't make it up. In my humble opinion, this is where your taxes go, supporting righthanded people who doesn't know what the lefthanded people are doing.

Having worked in local government for a few years I’ve never doubted that a good part of my taxes are wasted.

Sadly I do agree with her

At our school, the managers are paid so much money for spending their time in meetings, that the school is short staffed on vitally needed, but poorly paid, TAs.

Personally, I find it very upsetting to see the NHS struggling under such difficult conditions. I and my DH have both had such exemplary medical treatment which I find
hard to fault.
I got quite annoyed when we were requested to 'protect the NHS' when quite rightly the NHS should have been there to protect us !
Jeremy Hunt was in post for some years and now is criticising much of what's going on. During his tenure a large scale study was carried out as to what preparations and procedures should be put in place if we were confronted with a pandemic. It appears that none of the results from this study were implemented. If this has been the case, PPE would have been at the ready from the start. Where does the blame lay for this being ignored?
Why is it that successive governments have thought the solution to solving the NHS problem is to throw money at it.
Please, please, please - somebody sort it out!!