NHS

It does worry me that so much poor and inaccurate information is put out. Full Fact has looked at the claim that the NHS could save £850 million if we used GPs and A&E less for minor ailments does not stand up to scrutiny. The GP estimate is based on one survey of 56 GPs. It found that this is a very rough figure based on uncertain and out of date data. It uses self-reported data from about 60 GPs on 5,000 appointments in 2015, and applies this to the total number of GP appointments in 2008.

I would call this really poor evidence and, as I say, feel concerned that such things can be put forward as a "truth". Very poor reporting.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/02/suspicions-over-accountable-care-organisations-in-the-nhs

Letters from the public about ACOs.

www.scribd.com/document/368159640/100-Ways-the-Conservative-Party-Have-Failed-Our-NHS-2010-17

100 ways? Is that all?

Virgin does that with trains, too, then hands the contracts back when they don't make enough profit.

I don't understand why people can't see what Branson is doing.

I know and I agree. But lots of people believe the NHS loses these contracts because the private company submitted a better tender than the NHS tender. It's one of those urban myths.

NHS trusts are not allowed to tender for lots of contracts.
It's immoral.

I saw the Guardian article about Virgin Care and it's hard to accept just how much money these contracts are worth. To make matters worse for me personally, one of my best friends and her husband work as drivers for the other company named in the article - Care UK - on the out of hours and home visits services. Actually my friend works in two roles - driver and receptionist. She can work a shift as a driver and then immediately work another shift as a receptionist. I know what a bad employer it is and even though it's failing in this area, the contract has been extended twice because no other company will tender for the contract. Care UK has the contracts in bordering areas too and there's major issues with those contracts too.

“These figures clearly show that privatisation has a strong momentum within the NHS,” said Paul Evans, the director of the NHS Support Federation, a campaign group which monitors the privatisation of NHS services and which produced the report. “The doors to private sector involvement in the NHS remain open despite promises to move away from market-based approaches by NHS leaders and politicians. Privateers continue to win huge new NHS contracts.”

Virgin’s £1bn haul means it now has over 400 separate NHS contracts.

Its growing role has prompted particular anger among anti-privatisation groups. It pays no tax in the UK and its ultimate parent company, Virgin Group Holdings Ltd, is based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven.

In addition, it came under fire for suing six clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Surrey, NHS England and Surrey county council last year after losing an £82m contract for children’s services to a rival bid involving a local NHS trust and two social enterprises. A settlement of the action appears to have involved the six CCGs paying Virgin an undisclosed sum.

Virgin said it had been so concerned over “serious flaws in the procurement process” that it had no choice but to launch the proceedings.

The private sector’s £3.1bn of wins last year represented more than two-fifths (43%) of the £7.2bn of contracts tendered by the NHS for services including babies’ health and out of hours GP care. That dwarfed the £2.55bn (35%) of tenders won by NHS trusts and £1.53bn (21%) by not-for-profit organisations, including charities.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/29/richard-branson-virgin-scoops-1bn-pounds-of-nhs-contracts

A third of all contracts that were privatised last year went to Branson. They shouldn't have been privatised.

This is what happened when May was asked about ACOs.

skwawkbox.org/2017/12/29/video-may-squirms-when-asked-to-pledge-nhs-acos-wont-lead-to-insurance-based-healthcare/

Who do you blame for nurses pay, misswoosie?
That's not up to the hospitals. It's the government which decides whether they are to get a pay rise or not.
Same with teachers and council workers. The government decides the overall pay strategy.

yougov.co.uk/news/2015/03/12/nationalisation-ideology-beats-pragmatism/

yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/nationalisation-vs-privatisation-public-view/

10% more people want the NHS to stay in public hands now than did in 2015. That says a lot about the public perception of the NHS.

No, and I didn't blame the government for the way I was treated or my husband was treated.

I blame the government for not putting enough money into the NHS, and for having undertaken two wholesale reorganisations in the past seven years and now talking about another one.
I heard this morning that Hunt thinks that the NHS finance should be organised on a ten-year cycle.
He's the one who has been in charge for a few years, and changes it all the time. Before that, Lansley was in charge.
When I was in hospital when the NHS changed to NHSE, the nurses and doctors I spoke to had no idea about it.
Not a single one was bothered about the politics of it, which is why it's still in a mess.

That's what I blame the government for.
Are you saying the NHS is well enough funded?

Sorry Durhamjen but you cannot blame everything to do with the NHS on the government. As an ex acute stroke nurse practitioner and prior to that, 10 years spent working in ICUs at Freeman and Newcastle General (Neuro ICU) I can very safely say that most of what you've written about was very simply poor practice and lack of joined up thinking on the part of the medical staff. A very similar thing happened to my Aunt about 10 years ago and the GP said she'd had a stroke, gave her aspirin and sent her home. I spoke to her family and said she needed to go to hospital as very few strokes present with a fit. Sure enough she had a very aggressive brain tumour and unfortunately after surgery, months of chemo and radiotherapy she died about 4 months later. One of the reasons Durham is in such a mess is because of it's PFI status. As I've mentioned before, the number of managers in the NHS continues to rise whilst the number of nurses continues to fall. Additionally, IMO nurse training doesn't adequately equip nurses with the skills and knowledge to provide good basic nursing care and there's a lack of strong leadership, good role models and management at ward level. Do you blame the Government for the nasty little consultant's lack of empathy and communication skills?

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/23/poorer-children-disproportionately-need-hospital-treatment

This is what Hunt wants to happen to the NHSE now.

Stephen Hawking, Allyson Pollock and colleagues have launched a legal challenge to stop Jeremy Hunt and NHS England from proceeding with plans to turn local NHS bodies into Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). Here are some facts about ACOs:

ACOs will be given the money for your care as an insurance premium, and will pay out only for certain treatments - like an insurance company.
ACOs will in many cases be handed over to actual insurance companies and other private firms.
ACOs will be able to decide what care is free and what they can charge patients for.
ACOs will be paid more if they 'save' money (i.e. spend less money on front-line services).
ACOs will be subject to commercial rules and will hide behind the veil of 'corporate confidentiality'.
ACOs are not recognised in any Act of Parliament and as such have no legal basis.

It doesn't beggar belief at all, but we come from different sides to the same problem.
Who gives the money to the NHS to spend?
You omitted to notice the sentence above the ones you quoted which said "Non contractual payments which require HM Treasury approval."
Yes, the NHS decides which departments they can spend money on, and the different hospitals decide who to employ.

In 2011 my husband was sent to Durham University hospital because he had a fit in the car when I was driving him to Durham.
I turned round and went to the GPs. They tried to bring him out of it, checking his diabetes and his other functions - as they were the ones who knew him. Eventually they decided he'd probably had a stroke, so sent for an ambulance to take him to hospital. He was there for a few days. One day I went in, as he had phoned me to say his insulin wasn't working properly and they'd moved him to a different ward.
Not true, but when I got there, a doctor was sitting on his bed telling him he could go home.
I asked about the stroke, and they had not looked at the GPs letter, and not done a scan.
They sent him for a scan, and a few hours later we were told he had a lesion on the brain, and would have to go to the RVI the next week, but could still go home if I could cope.
I'd coped with him being disabled for 15 years until then, so thought I could manage another weekend.
Anyway, a lesion is a brain tumour. He was operated on in the RVI but died four months later.

When the new NHSE came in on April 1st, 2013, I was in the same hospital with an undiagnosed back pain, undiagnosed because nobody could read the scan properly.
When the right people came to work the next day, I was sent by bluelight ambulance to the Freeman intensive care, because I'd had an aortic dissection and was lucky to still be alive. If they'd sent me home like they were going to as it was the Easter weekend, and I'd done the normal housework, I probably wouldn't be typing this now.

But the reason everything changed that weekend, and the reason things are still changing in the NHS is because the government don't wish to pay for the NHS, despite the fact we put less in than most other countries in the EU.
They want it privatised, and it's nothing to do with individual stories here and now; it's ideology.
And it's only opposing ideology that will change it to what it should be.

Durhamjen "This is a response to a FOI request about NHS redundancies since 2010.
Not only do we have a crisis in staffing, but we have paid out over a billion in redundancy payments.
Seems wrong to me, somehow"
So there you go. It was the NHS who made the decisions regarding redundancies which have cost a fortune not the government.
I have little faith in the NHS and my experiences this year with my elderly parents have shown me without doubt that some of the so called caring and medical professionals could do with a good boot up their backsides.
Today, an arrogant little consultant at a hospital in Durham stood over my 85 year old father and said "You've been here 4 weeks and have made very little progress". My father fell 4 weeks ago and broke his hip and tore 3 tendons in his shoulder. He was lying outside in the dark and rain and temperatures of 1c for 90 minutes before he made it into an ambulance. His pain was very badly controlled for the first 2 weeks after his hip op and his shoulder injury wasn't diagnosed until 4 days after the op even though he presented to A/E unable to move his shoulder. He's just recovered from a chest infection and his legs are so swollen he's wearing shoes 2 sizes bigger than normal. And that horrible man has the audacity to say he's made no progress but then send him home tomorrow to a house with stairs and no downstairs toilet? The communication has been appalling from all members of the team. Until this morning we (he lives with my 80 year old Mum who had a hip replacement in March and carpal tunnel release in August) had no idea which services were going to be coming in to see Dad when he came home, even though they've been planning (and I use that term very loosely) his discharge since the 21st Dec'.
Today they announce that the carers will be coming at 8am to get him up and 7 pm to put him to bed! Everyone seemed a little nonplussed when I asked how they were going to get into the house at 8am as Mum sleeps very badly, and has severe arthritis so isn't downstairs before 9am.
Ah, and in their wisdom, despite the fact that Dad's had swollen legs for 3 weeks now, they decide to start him on water tablets the day before he's coming home !
In hospital he has to walk with his zimmer and a nurse and isn't allowed even to stand up or get out of bed by himself, but he's fine to come home to a house with stairs with just his elderly , frail wife to supervise his mobility. And today the consultant is telling Dad he's spending too much time lying on his bed (3 hours in the afternoon because his legs are so swollen from sitting in the chair and he's up at 8am and doesn't get into bed until about 10pm) yet it's fine for him to go home and be put to bed at 7pm and not get up till 8am? Beggars belief.

r.mail.crowdjustice.co.uk/track/click/5pfhef92e7ale3d

Update.

By the way, it's crowdfunded, but fortunately the costs are capped at £25,000.
It already has £15,000, so if anyone wants to give them a bit more you can do so through crowdjustice at

bit.ly/999PeoplesJustice

We'll keep our fingers crossed that they win this one, too.

I feel quite positive about it for once.

Happy Christmas to all those who appreciate a decent NHS with no private profit taken from it!

durhamjen I did quite a few months of work as an agency secretary in various departments at Leigh Day and, for once, enjoyed what I was doing as I could see the firm was winning some really worthwhile cases. I haven't worked there for about 7 years.

Someone on here used to work for Leigh Day, I seem to recall.
Do thank your friends if you are still in contact.

Good news for Christmas.

999callfornhs.org.uk/999-judicial-review/4593838706