Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

I'd like to have a look at their 'expenses'. ;)

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

Running costs are 4%

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

If you started funding it with lottery proceeds where would it end ? An education lottery? A transport lottery? Just ends up being another tax, which would be paid by those that can least afford it and like a gamble. The National Lottery is increasingly funding things which should be covered by general taxation. Make it simple and increase income tax/vat, and say what its for, then we don't need to worry about operator profits etc. There already is a national lottery of sorts anyway - called Premium Bonds, nobody in the private sector creaming off profits from that

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

It really doesn't matter how much money you put into the NHS it would never be enough. There would always be someone, somewhere who fell through the net because of some reason or another.

The NHS does need to be run better but how? If the people who do the running are also the ones "profiting" from any mechanism put in place how is it ever going to work.

Sometimes though things are the wrong way round with suppliers controlling things. The NHS network is a case in mind. I worked on a hospital patient system for years. It was getting more complex and we were starting to integrate with some clinical data (scan images) and this was in the old MSDOS days. But there was a set of manuals on the shelf that detailed different data items and what values to use. So gender you have 1=male, 2=female, 3=neonate...8=not given, 9=unknown. We used the supplied manuals to write our system so when we needed to send data for central processing (anonymised for stats purposes) we were OK.
Problem - a US supplied lab system was bought and we had to integrate to it but it didn't understand the idea of "a patient". It knew about "an inpatient" and "an outpatient" but not simply the person who could be either (or in our hospital both at same time). We did the work and it was fine, we didn't need the data back at that time.

The issue is that different health suppliers have bought different platforms and these don't talk the same "language". Diagnostic and general coding can be different ICD, Read, proprietary. But that really shouldn't be a problem. The system can use what ever but the interface to the NHS network needs to speak NHS data. So query arrives in NHS speak, the system then needs to translate, do work, translate the answer to NHS speak back to the requester. The NHS dictates how data is formatted and transmitted. It just seems the vendors are trying to make the NHS a polyglot and do all the work.

I'm sure there are other projects with such control issues. All not helped by not having good managers because you've promoted your best clinical and technical staff who may not be good managers leaving less good staff (who could make excellent managers) left to do the actual work.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

To true tweetie...

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

Everyone has known for a while the biggest problem in the NHS was mismanagement the trouble is every time we employ people to solve the problem they end up being just the same. An organisational reform is needed but also needs to be both better implemented and sold to the public so the "privatising the NHS" brigade doesn't get all hot and bothered. It's ridiculous an organisation with the size and buying power is getting such lousy deals on purchases and imo price gouged by certain sectors.

Personnel need to be better organised and managed then they are now as there are usually plenty of staff but badly dispersed. I agree that more money isn't the answer as there will never be a right amount as long as the organisation is so badly mismanaged.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...y_to_clipboard

Well there's a surprise. Applications for nursing down 23% after we take away bursaries from nurses, and force them take out massive loans to train to look after us. The reward being crap pay compared to other graduates and , a job in a dying health service where they are open to abuse and lawsuits from an ungrateful public. As if the NHS wasn't in enough trouble.

Do you think Jeremy will take action, or is operation meltdown going to plan?

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

I've never understood why or when you needed a degree to become a nurse anyway.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

It's a farce. No doubt we'll have to recruit more nurses from overseas at more cost than the bursaries.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

NHS spending per person will be cut next year, ministers confirm
In a written statement to the House of Commons health minister Philip Dunne said NHS England’s per capita real terms budget would increase by 3.2 per cent in 2016-17 financial year.

However growth would fall sharply next year, down to just a 0.9 per cent increase in 2017. It would then go negative by 2018-19 with a 0.6 per cent fall in real spending per head in that financial year.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7549686.html

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

Well they have to fund the bargain basement upcoming tax policy somehow.

When people vote for low taxes what do you expect?

---------- Post added at 18:14 ---------- Previous post was at 18:04 ----------

You are correct to a point, the NHS has 2 problems, a combination of bad management and under funding. A good way to check how well funded it is, is to compare the funding per adult to france, germany and even america, we are behind all of them significantly.

On the management side I think a lot of issues are down to employees, particularly the skilled ones like GPs, consultants etc. been used to current very good employment terms and as such resisting more realistic terms.

e.g. my GP only see's patients 3 days a week, what is she doing on the other days? other GPs around here are commonly the same, not often available 5 days a week. At my old GP surgery where it was pretty much impossible to see a full time non locum GP, I was surprised to find one of the GPs who worked there at my DLA tribunal about 4 years back. So that explains what that GP was doing instead of seeing patients. I think a lot of doctors, do private work alongside their NHS work to maximise their earnings, the issue I have is this compromises their availability for NHS work which is why I think any doctor employed by the NHS should agree to doing no private work.

There is also a lot of hidden information which to some people may be a wake up call, e.g. in some areas a GP refferal has to be vetted by a middle man department to get the referrals approved, a cost management exercise. Many GPs have limitations on referrals they can carry out per financial year, again a cost management exercise. Many people do not get the support they need to lead better quality of lives as a result of the NHS not been able to cope.

This varies heavily from area to area which is why some people find it hard to understand how bad it is, e.g. my sister can ring her GP surgery at 1pm and get an appointment the same afternoon, my surgery opens its phone lines at 7.45am and by 7.55am the appointments are gone for the entire day. They allow advanced appointments to be made up to 2 weeks ahead, but 90% of the time there is none available. If you ring and say its urgent they tell you to goto A&E which is actually against NHS guidelines to try and reduce load on A&E departments. Once an ambulance took me to my GP surgery after I was refused an appointment due to lack of slot, and they had claimed there was no such thing as emergency appointments, the surgery manager was embarrassed when the paramedic explained the obligations they have to fullfill with everyone in the waiting room listening. They of course never changed their policy tho.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

As l say its important that money is not wasted in the NHS as there is only a finite amount of money Andrew but l have always said no matter what party are in power if the public want a better funded health system like they have in some other European countries they will have to realise that you will have to pay a bit more for it.

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

I'm sure our up coming trade deal with our US friends will only help the NHS to survive

Re: Crisis in the NHS
 

I agree. Of the two main parties, Labour are unelectable thanks to their leader and the Conservative party is unlikely to raise taxes. So I can't see the situation changing anytime soon.