NHS

>>> Should I go on ...?

Yes please!

Hope this isn't homework ;)

Modernising medical training is NOT the same as shortening it

Private medicine is not "the dark side" it is a way of delivering care that also makes money for shareholders and still has higher staffing costs. Learn from it.  The NHS shareholders are the taxpayers.

Maximise operating theatre time for surgery, look at the essential staffing mix required to provide care for patients and ensure that this staffing level is maintained (they DON'T have to be the same people)

Allow GPs to offer appointments the same week for urgent consultations that aren't emergencies rather than forcing them to treat all contacts as emergencies.

Reward services that provide excellence but if you penalise those that don't how will they improve?

Thant's surely enough!

Certainly not homework; I'm studying computing and my year (3rd) hasn't started yet!

Question is asked because I think the NHS would be something worth being proud of if it worked as it's supposed to and I'm curious as to what the local EE experts think.

I'm sure the answer can't be too cut and dried or surely it'd be implemented already.

I think you will find the answer *IS* that cut and dried.

Common sense is not too common in government think tanks!

Heh. I'd like to think that's mostly cynicism... but being a cynical person myself I'm inclined to agree. Nevertheless...

Another idea I'd heard was that the British government tries to run each of these departments of office like businesses rather than like services. I think this is akin to what MM said:

>>> Hospitals should not have financial restraints put on them - we pay for them with our taxes, they should get whatever money they need from a central fund rather than being given a budget to work from.

The age old problem though with regards to any suggestion like "let them have more money!" is "where is that money going to come from?". What dept should suffer in order to improve the health service? One that immediately springs to mind is military - those missiles (titans?) - but I'm not a politically-oriented individual and mostly think that because I'm generally pacifist. Do we in fact need those missiles? Could we instead have used that money to boost NHS?

Nope.

There is too much money being wasted by this government paying for "focus groups", "think tanks" and other totally meaningless, completely useless bodies of faceless civil servants drawing huge salaries to come up with crackpot ideas that anyone with a modicum of common sense will see that they just will not work!

The NHS has had billions poured into it, yet only a fraction of that has reached the areas where it is needed.  Too many people have got their fingers in the pudding and the money is being drained away on unnecessary waste.

Get rid of the beaurocrasy, let those trained to do the jobs get on with their jobs, stop imposing quotas and ridiculous tests and let the system start working again!

Free cigarettes for OAPs would remove a lot of the burden of care. Take my dad for example, if he were a chain smoker he would probably be dead by now but as it is he's been retired for about 25 years and costs the NHS about £40 per week in drugs to keep him healthy and a load more on regular check-ups. I on the other hand smoke like a chimney, only see my GP once in 10 years - for a passport application which I had to give him £20, and will probably die on my 65th bitthday.

andy, you should at least get a gold watch, think of all the revenue in duty you have paid on your ciggies to the Treasury that can be redirected into healthcare.
 .... if only it was ....

Masqueraid
I agree with most of your comments- in fact, you are agreeing with me.
The figures of improved waiting lists are from the official statistics:
http://www.performance.doh.gov.uk/waitingtimes/index.htm
Please look at the archives columns.

Clearly the NHS has created a lot of new posts compared to last decade.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Pressreleases/DH_4086562

What happened was that the working time came down and the salaries went up massively. This meant that for the same amount of work to be done, more people and money was needed.

I did not mean to sack all the managers, but the number certainly should come down. There are managers for every thing, again the same comments for doctors apply to them- work harder for salary.
 
The fee system should work; poor sections should be asked to pay- they should be able to claim it back along with other remunerations if they have attended the clinic, otherwise they lose the money.

Another thing is, NHS uses the biggest modern day SLAVERY. It gets foreign doctors and nurses, give them cheaper jobs and makes them work hard. I have noticed that most of the junior doctors are Asian, African or South American while consultants as well as charge nurses are English whites(sorry- I do not mean it as an aggressive and racial comment, more of generalisation). Then complain that local doctors have no jobs. How silly! The local doctors want only to do big things, can't they do the ordinary job these foreigners are doing? I used the term slavery, not because they are physically forced, but economically, setting double standards. Where else in the world would a senior doctor of local origin can be a consultant while a foreigner who does the same job  is not allowed to be a consultant but called by a special name Associate Specialist and made to do the same job for lower salary!

As  you clearly pointed out, improvements will not happen, no politician would want to commit suicide!

>>> instead we only attempt to treat the failures.

is that not a prerequisite to improving the health of the nation?

No. I think you've missed the point completely. You don't improve the health of the nation by just treating their illnesses. Instead effort has to go into preventing illness in the first place.

Yes, but while at any given time there are so many people requiring treatment, how would we cut back on it in order to prevent some others needing it in the future? Possibly if some of these financial schemes that have been mentioned were implemented and worked as we hope the NHS would have enough to continue treatments and start work on prevention. until then...

As an aside (i.e. no points for it), how does [English] NHS compare with NHS Scotland, Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland and NHS Wales?

...work on prevention

can be left then.

When you're up to your ass in alligators it's always hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp.

You are preaching the gospel of 'giving up' before you have even started.

Let's kill the old people; that'll get rid of most of the problems. It's not as if they produce anything useful after they retire.

You may be ready to kill me, but I'm not ready to be killed.

For those of you watching the news unfold today can I offer this as an (admittedly cynical) view on the latest sticking plaster for the NHS but also as an example of the 'quick fix' rather than determined prevention that patrickab is talking about:

Hospital "Deep Clean" to beat bugs ....
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ik6Zhj9ZpCOI9AS59HD0Slz7yayw

Forgive me for suggesting that from today each hospital CEO will recieve a directive to implement a minimum of one "Deep Clean" per year.  This will then equate to - one "Deep Clean" per year, tick box and send completed return to Dept of Health.  Hospital doing what it's told (collect bonus points) & govt proves hospitals cleaner than ever (win election).

No doubt the original plan to call it a "Spring Clean" would have been shelved as the public may have been left with the false impression that hospitals would only be cleaned once a year (and NHS hospitals would have closed for March).

Of course this is a deliberately extreme view but I'm sure anyone who has been involved with the Health Service in any capacity will have been thinking something similar.

The problem about cleaning of hospitals is that it is subject to bribery. The placement of the contracts is open to abuse and the contracts are sloppy in the extreme.

For some reason the whole concept of outsourcing has taken a grip in the public sector. Not for a moment has a CEO of a hospital thought, wait a moment, if some company is going to make a profit out of cleaning my hospital, perhaps it might be better to keep that profit and spend it on better cleaning. Perhaps that's just too hard to figure out.

That's one aspect and then the other is that the contracted cleaners employ the cheapest people they can find. They are often people that come from parts of the world where there is no running water so their whole concept of hygiene is really non-existent. What should we expect from such low-grade staff with absolutely no control over them. It's a total joke, so it's no small wonder that MRSA and worse bugs are now caught in hospital. If you want to die, go into hospital with a minor problem and leave in a wooden box. Or worse leave hospital with a very poor quality of life simply because of poor hygiene in a hospital.

so we have some very opposed views of English hospitals - as is normal in any discussion of course. Some are saying "hospitals.. yeurk! better to lick a toilet bowl", and others "you watch too much T.V." or "maybe 5 years ago but now the toilet bowls are slightly dirtier than the hospitals".

How about some personal accounts of experiences in English hospitals?

Catch up with Leslie Ash's hospital ordeal and you won't really need to read much more - http://www.myvillage.co.uk/pages/celebs-leslieash.htm

As for waiting lists, of course they've come down. Patients are not ALLOWED to go on a waiting list if that would make the waiting list long. They just cook the books to make it look as if things are better. It's like the crime statistics - Credit Card fraud is no longer logged by the police/home office so the total number of crimes can increase by that amount before an overall increase is recognised. It's typical of a government that is deeply into lying about everything.

I believe the NHS is fast becoming the place-not-to-go when you're ill or in need of treatment. Instead it looks as if we should become medical tourists. Private medical care is ridiculously expensive in Britain - to the extent that the premiums are not worth paying. It's OK if part of an employment package but otherwise it's prohibitively expensive. The only part of the NHS which sort of works is A&E.

As I believe you have had no personal experience of any Government Health Care system I suggest you are not best placed to assess whether it's a good, poor or bad idea.

...Other than in the USA.

How about living in Germany (Cella) for three years, the UK for three years at SMITH SERVICES
Smith International (North Sea) Limited (Drilling Products & Services)
Woodside Road, Bridge of Don
Aberdeen AB23 8EF
SCOTLAND

And seven years in Lybia!!!

Well you get a better level of service in Scotland since you can claim the bonusses of being part of a minority group; that's patently obvious.

Dunno anyfing about Lybia though.

I see that you have experience of the Scottish NHS and the German Health Service. I'm wrong - not for the first time. I am surprised that you don't rate the German Health Service. Personally we have had experience of the French Health Service and found it to be good. A long time ago I was well looked after by the Scottish NHS - but it was a long time ago. I know absolutely nothing about Libya but I can't imagine that it has a good health service - perhaps you can enlighten us.

I would have a broken arm set in Tripoli or Benghazi, in the field when I was shot through my left side, Occidental had an English Doctor who patched me up well enough to get me to Italy, he saved my life.

The good doctor and I still stay in touch, when he left Libya he moved to the US, needless to say he is a very wealthy man now.

no more comments?

Interesting.  I am only in the U.S. and all leftists tell us is how wonderful a single-payer/European style of care is.  I don't believe that bs but many sadly do.  Most people are susceptible to lies if they are repeated often enough.

Interesting. Britain's health care system is broken, Canadas health care system is broken, and we are told the way to improve the US health care system, is to model these systems??? Why am I not surprised?

The NHS isn't exactly broken, it has a few problems mainly caused by the government's attempts to privatise it with the NHS trusts that are more interested in money than caring for people.

>>...more interested in money than caring for people.

It is a business like any other, but I doubt health care providers are principally modivated by money.

It wasn't a business until Nu-Labour messed about with it.

andy - the business model has always been there - the last significant effect was introduced by Ken Clarke as Health Secretary (the Purchaser/Provider split) & this still hasn't been completed(!) I don't think NHS health care providers are prinicpally motivated by money (have you seen the NHS pay compared to private sector?) But commissioners of NHS services *are* because if they don't get value for money they don't get a job the next year.  

Everyone is too motivated instead by ticking target boxes than anything else & this inevitably means that the original reasoning behind setting the target is lost as more efficient & creative means of achieving it and ticking the all important box are found.

You would not agree with www.workersliberty.org/print/9438 then?

What suggests I would?

My argument was with your suggestion that it was alright until the present Labour Govt got its hands on it.  

My premise is that successive governments have always had to balance the true cost of healthcare when they are trying to make it free at the point of delivery.  The exponential growth in the real cost of providing a full range of health care for the whole population simply cannot be met.

>> Even worse, the system is structured in such a way as to make it illegal to obtain healthcare services at your own cost <<

Ah, the Hillary plan circa 1993 for America.

Sorry I left it so long - have been swamped, and, frankly, forgot. Thank you all for your participation in an interesting topic :-)