Save the NHS

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Kitty There are no plans to privatise the NHS in Scotland and we have free prescriptions and free personal care for the elderly. This is funded from a budget which is per capita equivalent to the budget in England + Wales and seems to demonstrate that with different priorities and good management it is possible to provide a sustainable Health Service.

jen although I am concerned about the purchaser-provider model within the NHS, your statement
'Virgin still has a lot of NHS contracts. NHS money goes to Virgin then gets sent to off-shore accounts where they pay no tax on NHS money'
is a bit disingenuous to say the least.
If Virgin didn't have those contracts, another corporate, probably American, would. That is the reality of the NHS today. the providers like Virgin, have to use that money to provide the services they are contracted to provide, and if they don't reach the targets that they have contracted to do, penalties are levied.
I don't like it either, I don't think a target-driven system is the right way to run a Health Service and at the Mid-Staffs enquiry the judge said that the medical and nursing staff had lost their professionalism because they were so focused on targets.
This is what is wrong with the NHS and whether ministers have links to service providers is irrelevant, and nothing to do with 'saving the NHS'
A more pertinent question would be to find out how much profit Richard Branson made from his NHS contracts.
When I worked I saw a lot of people who worked for the NHS and not one person had a good word to say about it. They were demoralised and disillusioned and if that is how the staff feel, patient care is bound to suffer.
I don't want to save the NHS in its present form and I doubt if any if the people whose relatives died unnecessarily at Stafford Hospital do either. I would like a rational and non-political debate about just what the NHS can provide, and how we can change things so that those working within the NHS can once more take pride in their work.
I agree with kitty that the system is not sustainable. NICE is already rationing care and treatment (things like hip replacements and cataract surgery to name but two) but how the rationing is implemented is far from transparent.
The NHS has become politicised and that is its tragedy, but in its present form it is unaffordable in the longer term and that is one thing that all the parties agree on.

Jane Ainsworth. I read your email last night and had to go to bed and sleep on it before I replied.
I think you are being a bit naive yourself to think that American companies are not involved.
An earlier message from you suggested I try a freedom of information request to find out what I wanted to know.
I know that many GP surgeries in my area of Durham were half-owned by Assura which was taken over by Virgincare over 3 years ago. The name was not changed until March this year to Virgin Care. If you go on the Virgin Care website and look at their heading our reach, you will see that the Durham area is only a tiny part of Virgin.
FOI requests were made to CDD NHS to find out what Virgin get from the NHS.
There is no financial information because it constitutes a trade secret. It is exempt under the FOI act because it would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the company.

The reason I used Virgin as an example is because everyone knows Virgin and expects Branson to care about this country. That's the impression he always gives. Did you know that between 2004 and 2009 Virgin directors gave the Tory party nearly half a million pounds in donations?

Did you know that one of the board members of Monitor is the chief risk officer for Virgin Money?
However, the chairman, David Bennett, is a deferred pensioner of McKinsey and Company.

This is the American link.
McKinsey are at the heart of the NHS.
Today on the Green Benches website is an article showing that senior partners in Mckinsey have been jailed in America for insider trading.
A senior partner at McKinsey has donated £10,000 to Cameron's private office. Several former McKinsey staff work for both the Tories and Jeremy Hunt himself.

However, if all I had put on the website was stuff about McKinsey, you would say so what? Who are they?

Granny23 I think I have read that forecasters say the free personal care and prescriptions will soon cause real problems in the Scottish NHS. I don't know what the answer is but something has to change. If giving the GPs more say in how it is run, together with losing about 50% of the 'managers', is the way forward - good. Personally, I feel there will have to be an even more radical rethink than that. As jane says, rationing is here so we either live with it or think outside the box.

jen I think you have misunderstood my post - I am sorry if I didn't make my meaning clear.
When I said
'If Virgin didn't have those contracts, another corporate, probably American, would. That is the reality of the NHS today',
I meant that because American companies are already providing some NHS services, they would be bidding for the same contracts as Virgin and if Virgin weren't awarded them, they would probably go to the American companies. I am well aware of the role that foreign companies have not only within the NHS but other public services too.
As I have said, I don't like it either, but the reason the Government (and not only this Government, the previous Government did it too) is keen on it is that risk is transferred from the Government to the company. In other words, if something goes over budget, the Government, ie the taxpayer, doesn't lose out.
I'm afraid I still don't understand how exposing Ministers' links with Virgin or anyone else is going to 'save' the NHS.
I agree it is important to expose corruption and conflicts of interest in public life, but this is a side issue compared with the fundamental problems of the NHS, which are how to make good quality care available for all who need it within a limited budget, and how to improve staff morale so that they are capable of delivering it.

Sorry, misunderstood you.
However, if the NHS is not discussed in parliament in some guise or another, we will go through to 2015 and everything will be in place. There will be no way to change things so that private companies do not get more of our NHS and it will no longer be National.
How else do you think we can expose the corruption that is going on unless it gets discussed in parliament as soon as possible?
I agree with you about the previous government. Two days ago I learnt that there is a fund set up to invest in adult hearing the same day that the BBC had a report that 40% of NHS trusts have made cuts to audiology services.
I am deaf in one ear and have a hearing aid for my "good" ear. I do not know yet how this will affect me, but this company is setting up Mee Healthcare centres and hopes to have 100 open before the next election, mainly in Sainsbury's stores. One of the main shareholders is Cherie Blair and the hedge fund operates from the Cayman Island tax haven.
This is corrupt. They charge £25 for a hearing test and pay their workers £5.80 an hour. Two other shareholders in the group are Cavendish and Fidelity who between them have paid over £1m to the tory party.
I never trusted Tony Blair either.

If any of this is wrong and I get taken to court over it I do not care.
My husband died of brain cancer in January this year. He was on the Liverpool Care plan for three weeks. After I read your message last night, I went to bed and could not sleep. I had Radio 4 news on, and I am sure I heard that GPs are paid extra for the number of patients they get on the LCP.

Do you know that GPs are expected to identify the 1% of patients they expect to die each year and discuss with them how they want to die and whether they have signed an advance directive? The latest clinical guidance can be found on the Royal College of Geberal Practitioners end of life care microsite.

Sorry, do not know what a Geberal Practitioner is. Should have read General Practitioners.

Jen I think is it a good thing that Palliative Care has become a specialty in its own right, but I do know that the Liverpool Care Plan is controversial.
However I believe that it was developed with good intentions, but as in other areas of medicine and allied professions, Guidelines quickly become Rules to be Followed, rather than aids to clinical judgement. Clinicians are afraid to do anything outside the guideline or pathway for fear of retribution from patients or bosses, and sadly I can understand why. It is the way the plan is implemented in the NHS rather than the plan itself.
Unfortunately the thing that becomes lost in all the box-ticking and guideline following, is patient choice and patient autonomy, which should be the aim of all patient care, but most especially in the last weeks and days of a person's life.

Gone off topic now.
For those of you who think that epetitions do not work, there are already 105,000+ signatures to save the Children's Heart unit in Leicester, and it is going to be discussed in parliament next month. That epetition has only been on for a few weeks.
Epetitions work.
If you want to see how the NHS is being carved up by private health companies, please sign my petition.
236 signatures so far. It needs a few thousand more. Over 100,000 to be exact.

I do hope you watched channel 4 Dispatches tonight. If you did, you will realise that everything I have said is true. If you did not, please watch it.
However, it's not just Virgin.
Olease sign my epetition, and then we can find out who else has their snouts in the trough of the NHS.

Sorry, meant please sign my petition.

An indication of why the NHS needs an overhaul -

My husband has worked for the NHS since 1967. He is semi-retired but continues to work part-time. He is only allowed to do so much work per year regardless of the (evergrowing) number of people wanting his services. Part way through every year we start to worry about having to turn people away but, every year, he is offered more capacity, which he takes. If he doesn't complete his contract, he is fined.

Yesterday, two letters came from the local PCT. One was detailing how much of his contract he had fulfilled (on target) and his feedback and outcomes - all excellent. The other letter, from a different department, detailed how much he was short on his contract and asking him to allow them to reclaim the money from his bank account. If he did not agree with their figures he was to contact yet another department to put his case.

I appreciate that this has nothing to do with GP Consortia but is an indication of the waste of money and poor management which must be rife all over the organisation.

The NHS needs a radical reform!

I know very little about the inner workings of the NHS but isn't one of the biggest problems facing them, and causing massive financial problems, servicing the PPP contracts initiated by the last Government? I understand that, in some cases, the Government is contracted to repay huge amounts, often 6 to 7 times the actual value over a 30 year period.

The private sector appears to run rings round the public when it comes down to contracts - and also in supply chain management.

Okay, I give up, you can have your private health service.
Can't be bothered any more on this site.
My mother was a nurse before the NHS came into being. Her father died because they could not afford medication for him.
My father died on the ward where she finished her nursing. She got MRSA and died. She worked once in a fever hospital and if she or any of the other nurses passed a disease between patients they would have been sacked.
Just look at how many hospitals, etc. have been built and owned by Balfour Beatty. They not only own the hospitals , they own the catering, the carparks and the cleaning. They have now decided not to stay in building because they get more money from the rest of the services.
This govt. has not stopped doing PPP contracts. Like everything else to do with the health service it just does not tell us.
Last sermon. Goodbye.

It's not about having a private health service.

No-one is advocating getting rid of the NHS, just that it is obviously unsustainable as it is.

I don't know the answers but, at present, my husband cannot treat all the people who are in real need - that can't be right!

jen, you are so wrong to believe we don't care. We do and have shown it many times in the past year or so. In fact, I did sign your petition, in addition to others that I have signed, mainly through 38 Degrees as well as having written to my MP on several occasions - though he's probably a lost cause. I am well aware of how much I and my family owe to the NHS and hold it very dear. Please don't assume that you are the only one on these forums fighting to preserve it.

Quite fortuitously, though I missed the Dispatches programme last night, I have just read the associated article

And yet, the % of GDP spent on healthcare in the UK is 19th in the world, with 7.5% - the same more or less than Hungary.

Not sure what your point is granjura. Some countries spend more, but that does not mean they are spending the money in a way that most benefits the people who need it most.

We blinkin' well aren't Jess. There are three 'managers' involved in the rubbish from our PCT all of them earning lots of money that could be spent treating patients.

My point is, that as a society we make choices on what we spend money on.

Of course waste and inefficiencies has to be dealt with and improvements made - but still, the % of GDP spent in the UK is relatively low compared to other developed countries- and as said, about the same as Hungary. Shocking, no?

At the moment in the UK, the people who need it most seem to be the ones who are falling through the net (:

Have you read the article in the Guardian about the GPs who have made millions by selling their out of hours practice to Care uk?
Please read it and then tell me that you think it's okay to privatise parts of the NHS.
If you do not, then sign my petition at epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40126

Trending again, twice in one day. It's even on the first page now, 10 signatures in the last hour!