NHS winter crisis looms

Agreed, Jess, the same as they knew they were going to have lots of elderly people. Baby boomers didn't stop at a certain age. Lots of us just got older.
It's a bit much when even Simon Stevens is saying they've gone too far. He's the one responsible for saying the NHS could take £22 billion in efficiency savings.
I watched part of the debate today and was so annoyed that some Tory MPs are still saying that the NHS has been given an extra £10 billion that I was shouting at the television.
My grandson was sitting next to me, and looked most surprised.

You think March 2016 so long ago that its not relevant WW??
Yet that is the end of the last full year for which there are figures.

Lets look at the Government report itself then (Oct 2016) upon which the misleading information in so called "Full Facts" that DJ got her figure from is based

Difficulties in collecting payment mean that significantly less is recovered from patients who are personally liable for the cost of treatment than is charged
Three-quarters of trusts (37 out of 50) responding to our consultation exercise said that overseas visitor debts were a very important or a fairly important problem for their trust.

Most of the increase in money collected is due too the NHS having raised its charges, NOT to an improvement in tracking and securing repayments.

And the outlook isnt great. The NHS isnt even expecting to reach its own target of recovrign 500 million in 2016/17. See Fig 5

www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Recovering-the-cost-of-NHS-treatment-for-overseas-visitors.pdf

Page 35 of the document gives an explanation of why it is so difficult a system for the NHS to operate.

I am not suggesting that health tourism is the major part of the problem, but it is a particularly unjust part of the problem, because it is an abuse of the system.

The point is the NHS was designed for an era before large scale international migration, and its economics are sadly 'not fit for purpose' when borders are poorly controlled.

Are you saying that stopping immigration will give more money to the NHS, mair?

www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/brexit-and-nhs

Most of these issues impact on immigration, staffing and accessing treatment in particular.
Stop immigrant nurses and doctors and we will be the losers.
Many care workers come from abroad. We don't like doing it ourselves, working in care homes.

"Are you saying that stopping immigration will give more money to the NHS, mair?"

Overseas health tourists ar not immigrants DJ.

I dont think NHS staffing is the subject of this thread, but as an aside you should be aware that Care Homes do not fall under the NHS umbrella, so are a seperate issue.

I certainly believe we should be training enough medical staff of our own so that we do not need to import labour from abroad, which incidentally usually involves 'stealing' staff from countries that desperately need them. It never fails to shock me that left wing Globalists have no concern whatsoever that countries in Africa and Asia with serious shortages of trained staff are the victims of Western medical theft.

"The point is the NHS was designed for an era before large scale international migration, and its economics are sadly 'not fit for purpose' when borders are poorly controlled."

This says migration, mair, suggesting immigration as you are talking about the NHS.

Who says we have no concern for other countries? I know of quite a few doctors and nurses who have trained here, and then gone back home, quite often to train others in their own countries.
We don't steal; we train them. In some countries it's difficult to train because of hygiene problems.
Look at all the people on here who say they give to medicin sans frontiers.
Some of the charities I give to help to train nurses and doctors.
Why do you always assume you know exactly what left wing Globalists think?

Unfortunately, many of our trained medical staff decide to emigrate or not to continue into a specialism.

The cost of health tourism is like throwing a few stones down a hill after an avalance. They don't help, but they don't make a significant difference.

Don't forget that many health tourists hold British passports while living abroad. It's not nationality but residence which determines eligibility for NHS treatment.

The Hospital Programme will be showing someone who has to go and ask people to pay. That will be interesting; we should find out from that what the problems are and how much it costs.

Most EU immigrants come to the UK to work and pay taxes and NI. It's hard not to pay tax in the UK, unless you never buy a chocolate bar, travel on any form of transport or wear clothes.

A percentage of immigrants' tax should be used for healthcare, just as anybody else's tax is.

Did anybody watch 'Hospital' this evening?

Unfortunately, many of our trained medical staff decide to emigrate or not to continue into a specialism

Not really. While quite a number go abroad for a year or two most return. Britain still remains one of the best countries in the world to live in. The days of the 'brain drain' when many doctors were fleeing to the USA are long gone.

Its quite hilarious on the BMA website where they are deliberately scaremongering about doctors "thinking of" emigrating. Many doctors who have worked abroad have replied, all slagging off pay and conditions in BRitain and yet despite this they are all back here and almost all want to stay (various justifications for their return! LOL)

Yet there is an answer to these doctors trying to hold the country to ransom, train a surplus. There is ^no shortag^e of people wanting to become doctors its the most sought after university course in the country, and its much more competitive to win a place at a British university to study medicine than in most EU countries, never mind poorer non EU countries. Spain Slovakia Portugal even poor Ukraine all provide more doctors per head of population than the UK! Its shocking really. Increasing numbers of disappointed UK medical students are going to the EU to study, not out of choice but desperation.

" good high school results, is quite enough to get into more of medical schools in Romania and Bulgaria even if some of them may organize an entrance exam in Biology, chemistry and or English, while in countries like UK, even student with triple A of A-levels are rejected."

Site advising students looking to study abroad

Beyond the EU

Examples:
Applying to Caribbean medical University, student has more chance of being admitted that applying to USA, Canadian, British medical universities.

Russian medical study requirements
High school diploma: the prospective student must have got his high school diploma (certificate). Better if he has pass with Minimum 50% of marks in Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Hmm do you see how tough our Governments make it for our students?

How many medical students do you know personally, Mair?

Ahem! I'm glad the UK makes it tough for A level students to study Medicine. It's one of the reasons UK trained doctors are in demand globally. Personally, I wouldn't be too happy to be treated by somebody with an NVQ Level 2 in Applied Science.

By the way, A level students wanting to study Medicine are interviewed. Yes, they usually achieve very high A level results (3 x A*), but not always. Interviewers are looking for personal qualities.

It costs over £250,000 for a doctor's basic training - and more for post-university basic training. Fees only cover a fraction. How do you think this should be funded? I think it should be, but I can already hear the whingers.

All this talk about the EU and the NHS is taking our eye off what is really important, and contributes nothing to the problem.

Watched the commons committee yesterday, where the NHS bod (I'm useless at names) directly contradicted May after she indicated at PMQ that the NHS is receiving more money than it requested. The bod said absolutely not the NHS got LESS than they requested.

At no stage was it suggested that the EU was an issue in the NHS problems, so let's put that one to bed once and for all.

Another interesting view was Newsnight. The presenter with the knee length grey boots, suggested to a Tory MP who is a practising doctor that because of the demographics and new technology etc, the NHS will always be behind the curve and playing catchup that in fact there is no alternative.

He catagorically disagreed and -wait for it - pointed to how the Blair and Brown government reversed this downwood spiral by funding the NHS properly, without the need to raise taxes etc. and that the NHS had got to that glorious position of being able to properly plan innovation and the future All that effort has been gradually destroyed by the Tory government.

There was another strange bod on Newsnight representing I assume the private sector, but all he achieved was to throw into deep contrast the focus of business - emphasis on prophet and the two doctors - care for human life. The contrast was quite extraordinary.

This is very likely to be May's nemeses

I think the NHS 'bod' was Simon Stevens.It was quite ironic that he held up a copy of the Daily Mail with headlines about the latest crisis. He's right that the NHS wasn't given what it asked for, although Hunt and May keep bleating on that it was.

The NHS was promised an extra £10 billion. What the government won't admit is that £3.5 billion wasn't new money, but came out of the public health and training budgets. Nurses in training are effectively paying for part of the increase with the fees they're paying to do their degrees.

Sarah Wollaston, Tory MP and former GP, knows this and to her credit keeps going on about the issues and points out the lies.

The Tory doctor wasn't Sarah Wollaston by the way I actually know her name. It was a chap.

I have the most terrible weakness for names.

I'm glad the UK makes it tough for A level students to study Medicine. It's one of the reasons UK trained doctors are in demand globally. Personally, I wouldn't be too happy to be treated by somebody with an NVQ Level 2 in Applied Science

Yet you are happy to be treated by doctors trained in countries where not only are entry levels lower, but training standards are far less rigorous and corruption is much higher too?

Double standards or what?

www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/opinion/corruption-in-universities-a-blueprint-for-reform/2009139.article

What is to be done when an entire education system is corrupted, when universities sell cheap diplomas and the best academics move abroad?

Consider the case of Romania, where corruption has been pervasive for more than 20 years. Government ministers are proven serial plagiarists, students acquire their dissertations for modest sums online, and a failure to investigate allows widespread cheating to take place without censure. Everyone gets a degree, nearly all MPs are also professors at a university they helped to gain accreditation through their influence, and all seem to benefit; however, no Romanian university features in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the country is stagnating without skilled labour.

And this is the EU!! Eek!

And consider this Australian experience;

In April 2015, the Four Corners program of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed examples of how the standards of Australian universities are being compromised through corrupt practices, mainly as a result of the pressure on them to recruit foreign students and to ensure that they pass the exams in order to obtain much-needed funds. The examples given included the involvement of fraudulent recruitment agents, universities graduating poorly qualified or unqualified nurses, widespread plagiarism, cheating and exploitation. The program was appropriately labelled ‘Degrees of Deception’. In 2014, a story appeared relating how fraud and corruption within and outside Australia’s immigration services enabled thousands of foreign students to acquire illegal permanent residency visas in Australia, thereby resulting in unemployment of Australian graduates.

www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view/higher-education-hotbed-corruption

We would reasonably assume that a nurse "qualified" in Australia had reached the required standards! Globalisation is pulling down even first world countries to the standards of the lowest.

I was thinking the same thing when I read dd's post!

ww doctors ( Tory or not) often have their own personal axes to grind.In any case, the good old money days ended, there was a financial crash.

Yes, we should train more doctors and more nurses here in the future.

Yes but the Tories have always said that the NHS is ring fenced.

I don't think a race to the bottom is the answer. Standards for foreign trained medics employed by the NHS have become more stringent. The biggest problem is when agencies are used to plug gaps.

How many doctors, nurses or paramedics in training do you personally know, Mair? Or do you rely on the internet for all your evidence? Do you have any real knowledge of the standards required for school leaving exams in other countries?

Ha ha ha, whitewave. Local authority spending isn't ring-fenced and NHS responsibilities (public health, social care, learning disabilities) have been transferred to local authorities. Cuts in those areas have had a direct impact on the NHS.

Where are you going to find the money to train them, roses? How long will it be before the newly trained doctors and nurses will be able to work? It takes ten years to train a doctor for a specialism, which won't solve the current problems.

The number of jobs for doctors and nurses, especially district nurses, has fallen over the last six years, so there's not much point training them. STPs are already planning to cut the total number of beds.

This is all a distraction from the real problem of underfunding.