NHS winter crisis looms

We have Sue Ryder homes here ( they are certainly a charity.)

Hospice at Home is organised by your GP. It can be a charity, or not-for-profit organisation, or run by the council, depending on where you live.

Do you remember how earlier in the year, Jeremy Hunt called junior doctors all sorts of names for going on strike and having elective surgery postponed?
He's asked hospitals to cancel elective surgery himself in order to allow for the winter crisis. So it's okay for him to cancel operations but not the junior doctors. Strange, that.

Hospice groups who care for people in their homes are charities I think; ours does use a room at the local NHS hospital as a base but they would not do the normal care work which people may require on discharge from hospital; they are there to provide care for cancer patients and terminally ill patients.

That's why it's done through continuing healthcare. Anyone who is likely to die within the next 6 months can get funding for it, through the NHS or social services. I know this because my husband used it, and it was organised through the GP surgery and the hospital. We had quite a shock when we got home from hospital after his surgery, and had a phone call from the hospice about it. The hospice is a charity, but hospice at home isn't. It can be very confusing.

So why are we always fundraising for our local hospice at home?


I've just looked it up - it gets a minimum amount of funding from the government, the rest is by fundraising locally.

I said it depends on where you live. We fund raise for the hospice, but not hospice at home. I suppose it depends on how it was set up.

Macmillan nurses are a similar category. They may provide care in homes or in hospitals sometimes. My friend had a Macmillan team working on his oncology ward.

Yes, Jess.
The NHS would be in an even more dire state if it wasn't for all these other groups, hospices, Macmillan, Marie Curie, Lifespan, etc., as well as all the individual charities set up to fund various treatments.
We have a lot to be grateful for.

The government hasn't stopped dismantling the NHS over Christmas.

nhaspace.com/2016/12/24/christmas-message-from-the-national-health-action-party/

www.networks.nhs.uk/editors-blog/towards-a-merry-christmas

I have mentioned this before... I was a voluntary worker in a local City hospital. The NHS was under the influence of a Labour government and had been for some years. One day, I was asked to take delivery of hospital stationery and show the driver to stock cupboards. I was amazed at the size of the stock cupboards and even more amazed that there was positively no room to take more stock. I asked the driver to take it back... which he said he would but it was part of monthly stock that was paid for and contracted to be delivered whether needed or not.

And as for the ageing population. We, and our parents and grandparents, paid into this ever since 1948. Even some years later when I knew the value of money, I remember my family had to pay weekly to be on a Doctor's panel. I am the only member of my family who needed hospital treatment for an operation that would cost £3,500 in Turkey in an American hospital using the same equipment as the NHS at a cost of £15k.

As for "a dip in baby boomers", I grew up in the shadow of parents and grandparents who had fought for this country and other relatives who had lost their lives in two world wars. I remember that children were the future, and Commonwealth governments encouraged large families.

Having had to use a taxi in an emergency nearly 15 years ago, a middle aged Asian taxi driver from a Commonwealth country said to me that he was happy to be in this country. His younger brother had needed a lung removed and the operation was free as was other medical treatment that was needed. So, is someone on GNet discriminating against indigenous peoples of the UK who require medical treatment in old age?

Blah blah blah! You didn't pay for your own NHS care. You paid for your parents and grandparents, who possibly didn't live as long as you will and didn't cost so much. People weren't expected to live so long after retirement when the cease paying for medical care.

What does the fact that your parents and grandparents fought in wars have to do with anything?

Facts facts facts.

PS. Somebody on another forum once told that story about stationery.

My grandparents died before I was born. One of my grandfathers died before the NHS and because he could not afford medication.
We do and did pay for our own NHS care as well as that of parents, grandparents if alive, and children and anyone who needs it. The assumption is that most people will not. That's why it is/was such a good system.

In the meantime, Hunt is in China doing deals with the Chinese to take over even more of it.

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

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

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.

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!

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?

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

I was agreeing Mazie

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.

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

For anyone else who wants to read about it.

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 .

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?

More detail of the Chinese one in the HealthcareUK article.

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