NHS winter crisis looms

Good. One council fights back.

www.stratford-herald.com/63615-council-clear-rejection-nhs-transformation-plan.html

butnhs.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/there-is-a-toxic-culture-at-the-top-of-the-nhs/

I wish all these groups would get together. The anti-Hunt brigade needs a single voice. We need a TUC for the NHS.

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/healthcare-uk

It's part of the Department of Health and UK Trade and Investment. It must have people working for it outside those two departments.

Thanks for the link. Healthcare UK isn't there, because it's not part of the NHS. It's a trade/marketing organisation set up by government departments to support/faciltate trade in healthcare products.

This is a link to the government's press release about the healthcare mission to China:

www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-organisations-sign-new-deals-in-china

It states that deals worth £250 million were signed in total. It doesn't say how much Royal Liverpool University Hospitals paid for the scanner, nor whether the money was in the UK's or China's favour.

Eleven deals were concluded. Two of them were with hospital trusts, which operate as individual institutions with their own budgets.

However much the scanner cost, it's not true that the money could be spent elsewhere within the NHS, because it will come out of RLUH's budget. RLUH possibly think that it can recoup some of the money by charging other NHS trusts to use it.

chpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/The-architecture-of-power-in-the-NHS-Scott-Greer-Jan-2014.pdf

Sorry, page 7 onwards of this.

I couldn't find the list, but noted the reason for setting up CHPI:

"The need for such a Centre has been evident for a number of years. Over the last decade a democratic deficit has emerged where key decisions about health and social care policy have been taken by a tight network of actors to the detriment of the public interest. This was brought into sharp focus when the 2011 Health and Social Care Bill made its way through Parliament.

No independent research-based body currently exists to present an alternative view of the reform agenda which has led to the largest reorganisation of the NHS in England since its creation.

Moreover, policy making has become less transparent, more opaque and more centralised than ever before and there are increasing concerns about conflicts of interest emerging for practitioners of health care in England, as well as for policy makers themselves."

Very, very true! That's the problem. Nobody understands where money is being spent. Stories about stationery are being used as a cover up to the real wastages. They make great headlines, because they're easily understood and the general public doesn't know any different anyway.

Healthcare UK is not part of the NHS. It is a separate organisation formed by the Department of Health, UK Trade and Investment and NHS England - different thing entirely.

This shows some information about financial gains from the NHS, and where the money goes.

www.nhsforsale.info/private-providers.html

chpi.org.uk/santas-transformation-plan-stp/

This shows the reorganisation of the NHS, the numbers of staff working in each department. There is no mention of Healthcare UK.

chpi.org.uk/

keepournhspublic.com/useful-links/

Lots of links on here to groups that are investigating and campaigning.

www.nhsforsale.info/

I read that article too. I'm not comfortable about the NHS providing services on a commercial basis, nor being involved in complicated trade deals. I knew about HealthcareUK and I admit that I'm suspicious, because it could be privatised. It seems like the NHS is behaving like a commercial organisation and the patients are incidental. This is a far cry from what was originally intended. I wish somebody (journalist, politician, charity/think tank, etc) would investigate what's going on in detail. I have a horrible feeling that money intended for patient care is somehow being 'leaked'. The same thing is happening with the academisation of schools, which I know more about.

More detail of the Chinese one in the HealthcareUK article.

www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-organisations-sign-new-deals-in-china

I find this quite funny. I never knew HealthcareUK existed. However, Northumbria is going to teach India about seamless healthcare, as ours is so good. The irony.

www.gov.uk/government/news/northumberland-health-and-care-leaders-sign-mou-with-india

Unless we have an emergency many of us will not be able to see a GP in less than four weeks. Is that the sort of seamless healthcare we want India to have?

Colombia, as well.
I am not denying they need help, but should it come at the expense of our NHS?

That's the article I was reading, but it's all a bit vague. It seems as though the purchase of the machine is part of a much bigger deal and I'm not sure who benefits from it in the end - apart from a handful of patients .

www.onmedica.com/newsArticle.aspx?id=68928e05-b957-427f-a1f7-d7a2b51d1bcd

For anyone else who wants to read about it.

I bet the stationery order didn't cost £4bn anyway, which is what the NHS could save without the internal market and bed blocking. Goodness knows how much extra could be saved without having to pay the profit of private providers. In any case, the stationery bill is nowhere near the extra money countries such as France pay for healthcare.

I've been reading about the healthcare deal with China (Shanghai) and I'm not sure what to make of it. I have an uncomfortable feeling about the NHS being involved in so many commercial transactions with China, but it would need a proper investigative journalist to find out what's really going on. I bet most people don't realise that the NHS is being treated just like any other commercial organisation.

I was agreeing Mazie

Sorry, Jess. I was just refuting the absurd story about money wasting monthly standing orders for hospital stocks.

But they've got enough money to buy the world's only superduper machine from China.
Does Hunt, by any chance, have a Chinese wife?

Nearly a billion pounds is being spent on blocked beds and over three billion pounds is being spent on commissioning as a result of the Health and Social Care bill. And Hunt wants the NHS to provide a 7 day 24/7 service in all specialities. Ho ho ho!

And it has to be said, not at all sure what relevance the stationery cupboard has to today's hard pressed NHS. I worked in the NHS for a couple of years back in the early 80s and we were being pressed to find cost savings then. And they have been pressed to make cost savings ever since. The most recent madness (during the coalition years) has been driving down the number of beds to an unsafe level. This of course has a knock on effect to A and E, the people waiting to get out of the ambulance into A and E, medical admissions etc.
Last time my MIL was an urgent medical admission (burst varicose veins and resultant blood loss) she was parked in the gynaecology ward for 2 days before a doctor could escape from the ward she should have been on and walk the length of the hospital site to track her down and decide on transfusions.

That story about hospital stores is an odd one. I worked for about a year as a clerical officer (office dogsbody) in a hospital in the 1970s. Part of my job was to order the stationery. There was no standing monthly order. I ordered stuff as needed. The rest of the hospital's supplies were in the charge of a storekeeper. No monthly standing order there, either. But that was in Yorkshire which is full of canny bodies who wouldn't waste money

labourlist.org/2016/12/ashworth-calls-on-tories-to-set-up-new-spending-watchdog-for-nhs-starved-of-cash/