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| The NHS is nearly dead! |
For years the British National Health Service (NHS) has been touted as the best public healthcare organisation in the world. IT IS NOT, nor has it been so for decades. It is no longer able to fulfil its intended responsibilities (set out in post-war years) and is no longer fit for purpose. Whether by intent, ignorance, inefficiency, political meddling, poor financial and resource planning, waste and loss of control over critical supporting components, including loss of doctors to other countries; it is no longer fit for purpose. Public confidence is at is lowest level, with over 7.5 million diagnosed treatment requirements listed that remain outstanding, with some lists over a year long; even the patience of patients (including me) is coming to an and as a national swath of excuses continue (I'm sick of still hearing the Covid backlog excuse!). It is currently so dysfunctional that even overseas newscasters report it and millions of pounds are "lost" as it insidiously outsource problems of their own creation, thereby accelerating the breakdown (break-up?) of the NHS in to a two-tier system of patient care: For those able to shop-around within the offered services and those that are not. Duplicity is also prevalent in the overseers of the NHS.
We, the people, have allowed numerous governments to stealthily wind back the spirit of the NHS and its peripheral infrastructures for decades now. It is our fault that the NHS is failing, because we allow fuckwit politicians and "apparatchiks" to do as they desire under cover of "our" ignorance, indifference or apathy; that is not to say medical professionals within the NHS are blameless, for they have kept their timid heads down for years with few publicised whistle-blowers, perhaps because they know their money would keep coming anyway, or because an acknowledged and growing "toxic and bullying" culture intimidates them as parts rot from the inside. Even the Governments Care Quality Commission has been reviewed as not fit for purpose. To paraphrase a comment by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, "too many (in the NHS) have become very comfy in the tepid bath of managed decline". Ouch!
Labour clearly want to shake-up the NHS following the sudden departure of the head of NHS England, so they abolished NHS England (and its 10000 employees), with the hope of successfully drilling down into issues that are long-standing and all too apparent. The former administrative body's work will be taken up by the Department of Health and Social Care who will look to changing how the NHS is run. It looks like the new broom in town is going to give the NHS a good scrubbing, though I understand few will mourn its passing. I had no understanding of what NHS England did, nor NHS Scotland and NHS Wales, but this article helped.
Everyone paying tax in the UK is statutorily contributing to the largest single employer in Europe and they are getting bugger-all back in many areas of the NHS once deemed important: free prescriptions - gone, free dentistry and eyecare - gone, the availability of many local and social caring systems - gone, effective GP services - gone, effective hospital administration - gone. (GP now stands for generally poor as "super practices" are being formed throughout the land, giving service that at best is perfunctory) Everything we should value has been costed and wherever possible outsourced to organisations unknown and hidden in plain sight under NHS headed notepapers, in order to gain "efficiencies" and cost savings that have not made the NHS "better". Money that is being spent seems to be going on new estate, cutting edge medicines that benefit few, and all manner of frippery and corruption that doesn't really cure anyone; here I am thinking of the following: Political correctness and wokery, help with being fat (eat less), smoking (just get on and die), drug addiction by self abuse (ditto), chronic self-harming (ditto), childlessness (adopt and thereby save a poor soul) and addictions to computer game playing for God's sake (81 units in the UK). Most noticeable is the erection of new "estate" that increases facility but not effectiveness.
It seems to me that there are now too many risk-averse, secretive, hostile administrators; too many non-medical centric people beavering away in ways that no-longer directly facilitate the treatment of patients, but sometimes actually undermine their care. Senior administrators do not exhibit interest in patients anymore; they talk money, risk, excuse, expediency, secrets and unpublished intent, often overriding concerned parties and whistle blowers. My personal interaction with the NHS, by being in hospital a few times, suggests that staff on the ground floor of the patient interface are dedicated, effective and friendly, yet a bit fearful for their future. They know things are bad.
NHS whistle-blowers are not often heard of in the press, but in the case of convicted killer nurse Lucy Letby it was seen how "blowers" are often suppressed by "those above", who deny problems and refuse to act.
LUCY LETBY - though not really within the context of this article was a nurse who was convicted of killing many children in her charge and her post sentencing review revealed examples of corporate denial and obfuscation, symptomatic of the NHS? Hospital bosses said they were mislead and yet her hospital administrators ignored complaints about her (for fear of bad publicity) and children died during their procrastination; though some are still unsure about her conviction and others think she killed more, though some think less. What is obvious is how opaque the upper working of the NHS is and the disquiet about her convictions, which just keeps coming.
Getting back to the NHS; from my hospital bed I observed some people getting the briefest of interactions with staff and subsequently discovered they were "bed-blockers" - people fit enough to leave hospital but not "allowed" to do so because of social care commitments not being fulfilled by other parts of the NHS, or indeed by familial responsibilities/expectations. Bed-blockers cost the NHS billions and are acknowledged by government to be one reason beds are in shortened supply, putting fresh patients at risk by blocking their free flow through the NHS. To put this particular problem into perspective, in the Royal Free Hospital in London between 15-30% of patients are medically fit to be discharged but are unable to leave, for a myriad of reasons; predicting that of 141,000 beds available to the NHS nationally, up to 42,000 cannot be used, so now the NHS bed blockers and corridor blockers. Corridor blockers as those unfortunes destined to suffer in a trolley, often for many, many hours. There are even reported cases of people signing DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) forms so that they never have to endure corridor care again.
The Nuffield Trust has reported bed-blocking numbers to Government for years yet the situation persists for tens of thousands of people; these two bed-blocking cases are particularly striking. A classic case of "bed blocking" and a woman who became like a prisoner in hospital, both caused by supposedly integrated social services failing. The NHS hospitals are doing their job, but social services are happy to renege on their paid responsibilities. (Though I do wonder if parents or family are dragging their feet also).
The NHS no-longer delivers a service. It delivers a fractured and failing amalgamation of ever loosely bonded "facilities" designed to take the heat/demand out of core NHS services; "drop-in centres" exemplify this in that you drop in, they look at you without actual treatment and refer you back into a service no-longer working as it should. Perhaps drop-in centres (or unwanted shopping malls and large department stores) could be repurposed into residential care homes to house ex-patients stuck in NHS beds. The government houses immigrants at the drop of a hat, so why can't they store ex-patients, as indeed they once did in state financed care home beds? (Taking back a role outsourced by councils in the 90's to "save money").
Freeing beds for the sick should be a social priority, for the NHS still continues to waste billions on patients who don't need to be in hospital.
I predict that by 2035 the "NHS" will be an umbrella organisation below which will be a collection of separate corporate service providers responsible for enabling the aims of the "NHS", which they will promise to do only if there is money to be had for themselves.
ENOUGH!
Finally, if don't like your NHS job then leave or move on, as your wages are fair and for some very good indeed, so stop disrupting or "robbing" from this already ailing service.
If you think this item is a valid critique of the NHS, then pass it on.
