NHS.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/01/ambulance-services-england-fuel-bills-rise

Ambulance services across England face paying millions more in ballooning fuel costs this year, amid warnings that the NHS will face renewed pressures on pay, energy and construction costs in 2023.

The service with the highest total was the West Midlands, with a projected bill of £9.5m – a £1.8m increase.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/02/senior-uk-health-official-warns-of-unsafe-and-undignified-care-caused-by-a-and-e-delays

The deaths of an estimated 300 to 500 people each week caused by delays in emergency care is “not a short-term thing”, a senior UK health official has said.

Ian Higginson, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, warned about attempts to “discredit” figures estimating that as many as 500 people are dying each week because of the delays.

Official data will not be released until later this month but the organisation said it was expecting it to show December was the worst month on record for waiting times at accident and emergency departments, leading to what it described as “unsafe and undignified” care.

[kenwood]

Tell me this someone.
When we are told that , because of tremendous pressure on our health services only contact them if you are experiencing extreme
circumstances
What does that mean exactly ?
Because to my mind it could mean you are on the verge of joining the eternal choir by which time it could be too bloody late .
Some Health Services bod said plans are in place to save the NHS and relieve pressure .
What exactly are these plans .
It seems to me that if enough of us die then that would certainly relieve the pressure .
A kind of herd immunity thinking with death the ultimate solution .
P S Ive just tried to phone my GP practice and was greeted with a message to say the “ call team “ where at full capacity so there -,
I suppose I could always try again when I’m better .

[davycrockett]

Jan 3, 2023 15:20:33 GMT 1 kenwood said:

Tell me this someone.
When we are told that , because of tremendous pressure on our health services only contact them if you are experiencing extreme
circumstances
What does that mean exactly ?
Because to my mind it could mean you are on the verge of joining the eternal choir by which time it could be too bloody late .
Some Health Services bod said plans are in place to save the NHS and relieve pressure .
What exactly are these plans .
It seems to me that if enough of us die then that would certainly relieve the pressure .
A kind of herd immunity thinking with death the ultimate solution .
P S Ive just tried to phone my GP practice and was greeted with a message to say the “ call team “ where at full capacity so there -,
I suppose I could always try again when I’m better .

Sorry your I’ll. My advice go and see a pharmacist if your well enough to leave the house, if not call at 8.30 when most practices release in day appointments (but they’ll all be gone by 9.30). Another alternatives dial 111 they’ll triage you and if an appointments needed contact your GP and arrange one for you…

Good luck

[northwestman]

Seasonal illness aside, the real cause for concern is how the UK now has such pitifully low expectations of its health service that we are shrugging off the weekly loss of hundreds of our citizens.

Don’t take my word for it. According to Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), a collapse in ambulance response times, gridlock in A&E units and soaring rates of staff turnover are contributing to at least a quarter of the shocking number of avoidable deaths. “We think somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week,” reported Dr Boyle with refreshing bluntness.

If all these people have died unnecessarily since last Wednesday – real men and women, beloved fathers and mothers, adored husbands and wives who should still be alive – then that’s a national emergency, clearly. An almost unfathomable tragedy. But where are the TV anchors demanding immediate action? Where is the sepulchral BBC News tour of the morgues in which all those bodies are piling up? Why do these “avoidable deaths”, caused in no small part by managerial incompetence, excite so little outrage? Why do we stay silent rather than criticise the NHS?

After two exhausting pandemic years, it feels like we are suffering from Catastrophe Fatigue. How else to explain the fact that a nation which whipped itself into a frenzy over daily reported Covid deaths, mainly among patients who had already passed the median age for mortality, now seems numb to the news that people with years of life ahead of them are dying every single day because our health service is in a state of abject collapse.

Ambulances are simply not getting patients to them in time – mainly heart attacks, strokes and “an unusual number of late-stage cancers”.

So where, you may well ask, are all the highly paid NHS managers offering answers to this appalling crisis? Why the hell isn’t Amanda Pritchard, the £255,000-per-annum CEO of NHS England, and her team being hauled over the coals? They’re the ones in charge. Not that you’d know it. Shyer than the African aardvark, and even harder to spot, the NHS senior manager has perfected a camouflage so effective that it’s impossible to tell that he or she has any kind of responsibility for the NHS at all. We give them north of £150 billion a year to provide a health service that preferably doesn’t kill people, but there is zero accountability.

The British public are being gaslighted by these non-managing NHS managers, I think. It’s all our fault, you see. During the Christmas period, NHS trusts had the cheek to issue press releases urging “self-care” over attending A&E. “Stay away from us with your ghastly illnesses! Don’t go out for a run in case you fall or have a heart attack. Avoid alcohol. No thoughtless consumption of sherry trifle! Keep perfectly still, everyone, just for a few months until the winter crisis has passed and please strive to avoid becoming a burden on your local hospital because we won’t send an ambulance to fetch you.

In the past week, dozens of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents because they can “no longer provide safe levels of care”. They make it sound as if this were an act of God rather than a perfectly predictable consequence of not having enough social care beds into which thousands of recovered patients can be discharged. No board of a major company could get away with that “nothing-to-do-wiv-us, gov” attitude to corporate negligence.

“Unprecedented pressures caused by flu and Covid!,” cry managers like Chris Hopson, the chief strategy officer of NHS England. I heard Hopson on Radio 4’s World at One on Monday and rapidly became a potential cardiac arrest. Confronted with the tale of a 90-year-old lady with a suspected broken hip who had waited over 27 hours for an ambulance, he said that “everyone in the NHS works to provide the best quality of care possible blah blah…” but “we triage on the basis of clinical priority”. If you don’t have a “life-threatening” condition, if you are merely a frightened nonagenarian in excruciating pain, well, tough.

Andrew McFarlane, whose aged mother it was, had clearly been conditioned by years of NHS propaganda to accept that you mustn’t “put pressure on 999” if you’re “not at death’s door”. What a poignant contrast between McFarlane’s meek acceptance of his mother’s predicament and the chilling lack of contrition from Chris Hopson. Everything, it seemed, was to blame for the crisis in the NHS; except, of course, the NHS. Hopson bridled at the suggestion by the RCEM that between 300 and 500 people were dying unnecessarily each week because conditions in A&E and the ambulance service were so dire. “We need to be very careful about jumping to conclusions about excess mortality numbers,” he burbled complacently. Hospitals are at their most overwhelmed since the pandemic. It was a problem “every Western health system is facing”. Baby Boomers are reaching an age where a lot of them are ill. “We’ve still got 10,000 people who’ve got Covid in hospital beds.”

It’s worth refuting those ambitious excuses one by one. First, after a pandemic, you would expect fewer excess deaths, not more, because the most vulnerable have already been taken. No other developed country closed so much of its health service to non-Covid patients and no other country faces a backlog like the UK’s. It’s simply not true to claim that this is the most overwhelmed the NHS has been “since the pandemic”. In December 2020, at the height of the Covid madness, hospital occupancy was only 87 per cent, compared to about 95 per cent today. They won’t publicise that figure because, hey, it’s unhelpful for the public to know that hospitals were less busy than usual when we were being told to stay home to “support the NHS”.

I’m afraid Hopson speaks weasel words when he says there are currently 10,000 people with Covid taking up hospital beds. The most recent figure is 9,500, but only about 3,000 of those will have been admitted with Covid and only half of those are actually being treated with acute symptoms of the virus. The other 6,000 will merely have tested positive for Covid at some point after admission for other illnesses. And a large percentage of those patients contracted Covid – oh, yes! – in the hospital.

“They’re desperate to get some traction on bringing in new restrictions,” confides a senior source in NHS England, explaining why managers are keen to talk up the very moderate problem now posed by Covid. Anything to distract the blame from where it actually belongs, eh?

Some hospitals are already banning life-saving visits from relatives and reintroducing a mask mandate to combat a virulent respiratory virus which the hospital itself has given to patients. Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – is official NHS strategy.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when I read that Rishi Sunak is “confident” the Government has provided enough funding to the NHS to cope with the ongoing crisis. A bit like the manufacturer of the Titanic pointing to the reassuringly lavish fittings in the lounge bar. The vast amount of taxpayers’ money thrown at the No Hope Service will do nothing to save this doomed vessel because the root-and-branch reforms required to stop it sinking this winter will take too long; besides, no one has yet found the guts to attempt them.

Allison Pearson - Daily Telegraph.

[northwestman]

This has been building for decades under both parties. In the 1970s there were 400,000 beds and now it’s 140,000 while the population has grown from 57mn to 67.5mn. There is now a higher percentage of older people who will need greater levels of attention. No government of either hue has done anything except kick the can down the road and it’s the same now. Don’t forget one of the most useless recent Health Ministers is now Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Professor Carl Heneghan pointed out today that Therese Coffey promised 7.000 extra hospital beds for this winter. In fact, they've reduced the number of beds by 300!

inews.co.uk/news/therese-coffey-unveils-nhs-plan-7000-extra-hospital-beds-500m-social-care-fund-and-new-staffing-plan-1871772

[northwestman]

Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, says Rishi Sunak’s speech suggests he is “detached from the reality” of what is happening in the NHS. She made the comment in an open letter to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, released to the media. She said:

In the first week of January, many have come to expect performance challenges in the NHS. However, I am compelled to put on record that what is unfolding in England’s health service this week is far from ordinary ‘winter pressures’. Nor can Covid and flu be blamed for the current performance of the NHS.

In his speech this afternoon, the prime minister’s language appeared detached from the reality of what is happening and why. As far as the current NHS situation, it focused on false promise and hollow boasts when practical and urgent measures are required on the part of government.

Cullen said the shortage of healthcare workers was one of the main causes of the problems in the NHS. She said:

The responsibility for equipping publicly funded NHS and social care services so that they can meet the needs of the population lies squarely with the UK government. It is disingenuous to insist that these services are adequately resourced, when the evidence clearly demonstrates that they are at the point of collapse.

She also urged Barclay to reopen talks on the pay award before the next nurses’ strike later this month.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/05/rishi-sunak-accused-misleading-public-emergency-nhs-funding

Rishi Sunak faces accusations he has misled the public after it emerged hospitals and councils have not received £300m in emergency funding to free up NHS beds that was first promised four months ago.

The government announced last September it was providing an extra £500m to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital into their own homes or social care as soon as possible to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter.

In a speech on Wednesday, the prime minister admitted the “biggest problem” facing the NHS was the 13,000 patients in hospital who “should ideally be back in their communities or in social care”. Sunak said: “We’ve put half a billion pounds into what’s called early discharge, to help move people into the community this winter.”

However, the Guardian has learned only £200m – 40% of the emergency funding – has been given to the NHS and local authorities. The remaining £300m has not materialised and will not be dispersed until 23 January.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/06/patients-dying-nhs-hospital-corridors-avoidable-deaths

Ministers could help the patients dying in NHS hospital corridors right now – they just choose not to.

[zenfootball2]

Jan 5, 2023 17:07:44 GMT 1 northwestman said:

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/05/rishi-sunak-accused-misleading-public-emergency-nhs-funding

Rishi Sunak faces accusations he has misled the public after it emerged hospitals and councils have not received £300m in emergency funding to free up NHS beds that was first promised four months ago.

The government announced last September it was providing an extra £500m to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital into their own homes or social care as soon as possible to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter.

In a speech on Wednesday, the prime minister admitted the “biggest problem” facing the NHS was the 13,000 patients in hospital who “should ideally be back in their communities or in social care”. Sunak said: “We’ve put half a billion pounds into what’s called early discharge, to help move people into the community this winter.”

However, the Guardian has learned only £200m – 40% of the emergency funding – has been given to the NHS and local authorities. The remaining £300m has not materialised and will not be dispersed until 23 January.

we would have less problems like this if we had kept the cottage hospitals. untill they sought out social care things will not change.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/revealed-nhs-trusts-tell-patients-they-can-go-private-and-jump-hospital-queues

NHS trusts with record waiting lists are promoting “quick and easy” private healthcare services at their own hospitals, offering patients the chance to jump year-long queues, the Observer can reveal.

Hospitals are offering hip replacements from £10,000, cataract surgery for £2,200 and hernia repairs for £2,500. MRI scans are offered for between £300 and £400.

This comes as figures show a record 7.21 million people are waiting for NHS treatment in England, with routine breaches of the maximum waiting time of 18 weeks for non-urgent referrals. Health experts warn of the risk of creating a “two-tier” health service.

The premium treatments are being offered through private patient units owned and operated by NHS trusts and typically located on hospital premises. Procedures are often carried out by the same staff who would eventually treat patients if they stayed on the NHS waiting list.

[northwestman]

inews.co.uk/news/health/nhs-crisis-declare-patient-dead-hospital-waiting-room-floor-wife-strangers-2071852

A real life horror story.

[northwestman]

In an interview with LBC this morning Grant Shapps, the business secretary, defended the NHS’s decision to put temporary cabins in car parks for patients as a means of dealing with the A&E overcrowding service.

Yesterday the government said it was spending £50m in England “to expand hospital discharge lounges and ambulance hubs”. The Times says in practice this means some patients being put in cabins in hospital car parks.

It's bad enough finding a space in the car parks at either RSH or Princess Royal without losing spaces to portacabins.

[northwestman]

www.itv.com/news/2023-01-09/200-million-to-buy-care-home-beds-to-discharge-nhs-patients

Ministers will spend up to £200 million for thousands of extra care home beds in the hope of speeding up the discharge of hospital patients and reduce the strain on hospitals.

Are there any Tory backers who own care homes that need fast tracking to allow patients in, no questions asked as it is an emergency?

[kenwood]

Whatever happened to those Nightingale Hospitals suddenly put up to cope with COVID .
I think there were 7 in all providing loads of beds but I suppose they’ve got to be staffed . Whatever happened to nursing staff - did Brexit do fo them too.
Never mind ,I’m sure Sunak and Barclay have got a cunning plan .

[ssshrew]

It was suggested to me that the Nightingale hospitals could be opened again to take patients from hospitals who are in recovery mode thus freeing up beds for emergencies and operations. But, as you say, do we have spare staff available.

At least now they’ve had their Christmas and New Year break we can hope that this responsible government will come up with something!

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/12/beyond-dreadful-running-a-and-e-out-in-the-corridor-and-waiting-room-nhs

The intense pressure on the NHS in recent weeks has left hospitals unable to cope, patients at risk and staff in despair.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/12/ae-patients-in-england-waiting-over-12-hours-top-50000-for-first-time

Ambulance response times in England were the worst on record across all major categories in December, while people waiting 12 hours or more to be admitted to A&E reached an all-time high.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/22/jeremy-hunt-led-calls-big-pay-rise-nhs-nurses-last-summer

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, led calls just six months ago for a big pay rise for nurses to reflect the cost of living crisis, describing it as “unacceptable” that they were struggling to buy enough food for their families, pay their housing costs and get to work.

The statements, made last July in a report by the health and social care select committee, which Hunt chaired at the time, and signed off on, places the chancellor under more pressure to offer a better deal to nurses and other NHS workers to prevent further crippling strikes and stem the exodus of key staff to the private sector.

In the report entitled ‘Workforce: Recruitment, Training and Retention in Health and Social Care’, the committee said after a detailed investigation that: “It is unacceptable that some NHS nurses are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent and travel to work.”

It clearly suggested they be given a pay rise to match inflationary pressures. Inflation at the time was running at over 10%.

[staffordshrew]

Jan 22, 2023 10:13:29 GMT 1 northwestman said:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/22/jeremy-hunt-led-calls-big-pay-rise-nhs-nurses-last-summer

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, led calls just six months ago for a big pay rise for nurses to reflect the cost of living crisis, describing it as “unacceptable” that they were struggling to buy enough food for their families, pay their housing costs and get to work.

The statements, made last July in a report by the health and social care select committee, which Hunt chaired at the time, and signed off on, places the chancellor under more pressure to offer a better deal to nurses and other NHS workers to prevent further crippling strikes and stem the exodus of key staff to the private sector.

In the report entitled ‘Workforce: Recruitment, Training and Retention in Health and Social Care’, the committee said after a detailed investigation that: “It is unacceptable that some NHS nurses are struggling to feed their families, pay their rent and travel to work.”

It clearly suggested they be given a pay rise to match inflationary pressures. Inflation at the time was running at over 10%.

It was comments like that, and his book, that lured people to forget how he had behaved when in charge of the NHS.

The two faces of Jeremy Hunt.

[northwestman]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/05/unite-union-sharon-graham-nhs-strike-negotiations

The Unite union’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, has accused the government of lying about the state of NHS strike negotiations and said no talks on pay were happening “at any level”.

Other unions, including Unison and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), have said the government has not made any further moves towards ending industrial action since talks in early January.

Graham, speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, said the business secretary, Grant Shapps, was “actually lying” about minimum cover by ambulance workers, which she said was agreed on a trust-by-trust basis.

The government was also misleading the public on the extent of the talks to resolve the dispute. “In 30 years of negotiating, I’ve never seen such an abdication of responsibility in my entire life,” she said.

“Rishi Sunak is the CEO of UK plc. We are trying to sit down with him and do a negotiation. It’s very difficult to do a negotiation to solve a dispute like this if they won’t even come to the table.”

She said she could say “categorically that there have been no conversations on pay whatsoever with Rishi Sunak or Steven Barclay about this dispute in any way, shape, or form. They dance round their handbag, dance round the edges, but they will not talk about pay. And to me, that is an abdication of responsibility.”

[martinshrew]

The NHS has to be taken out of governing control and put in the hands of an elected board of cross party members, that way it stops being a political football for the governing and opposition party and we can put a long term place in plan.

What government would bother putting a long term place in plan when they know full went they won't be there to see it out?

[northwestman]

The government handed almost half a billion pounds to private healthcare companies to fix the NHS backlog last year, yet is still struggling to treat any more patients than it was, openDemocracy can reveal.

Experts say the figure is just scratching the surface, with NHS bosses in England having been given the green light to spend up to £10bn on private health companies as part of the government’s plan to reduce the record number of patients waiting for care.

The biggest beneficiary of the outsourcing has been the Australian healthcare multinational Ramsay, which received £134m to offer non-emergency care to NHS patients between 2021 and 2022.

Spire Healthcare, which operates 38 private hospitals formerly owned by Bupa, has been handed a further £108m over the same period. Circle, which is owned by Centene, one of the biggest US healthcare corporations, was paid £50m.

A further 30 private companies, which also include the Nuffield Trust and Specsavers, have been paid £195m in total as part of a contract aimed at boosting the number of patients the NHS treated in England between 2021 and 2022.

The data was obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request to all 42 NHS Integrated Care Boards, which are responsible for spending and managing NHS budgets regionally in England. Only 23 responded to openDemocracy’s request, meaning the total cost could be significantly higher.

The government is reportedly considering forcing the NHS to give more contracts to private companies, after the taskforce found “barriers” to maximising their use, according to a leaked document obtained by the Times. OpenDemocracy understands that the leak was accurate.

Despite the NHS being given the go-ahead to increase the involvement of private companies in providing care, the number of patients being treated overall has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

Between January and November 2022, the NHS treated 6.6% fewer patients from elective care waiting lists than it did over the same period in 2019, according to an analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

The BMA warned last year that the government’s plan risks “embedding a longer-term trend of outsourcing NHS contracts and funding to independent sector providers in England, rather than sustainably increase NHS capacity”.

Privatisation of the NHS by stealth methinks.

[northwestman]

More than 50 per cent of patients have had their appointments cancelled as a result of strikes in the NHS, according to a recent survey by the Patients Association.

[northwestman]

The job ads are hardly subtle. “Are you a UK-based junior doctor who wants job stability, great remuneration and the clinical support you need to develop your career?” runs one for the Tasmanian Health Service on the British Medical Journal website. “Base salaries”, the ad wastes no time in declaring, “range from $79,578 to $138,593 AUD”. That’s £42,805 to £74,509, a tempting rise for striking juniors in England, who make from £29,384 to £58,398.

Other medical vacancies Down Under prefer to talk up the “life” component of “work-life balance”. One hospital boasts its employees enjoy “a fantastic mix of restaurants, night-life and cafe culture” with “pristine beaches” and “national parks”. No need to mention the weather – the job on offer is at the Sunshine Coast Hospital in Queensland.

NHS junior doctors, who this week walked out on a four-day strike to demand a 35 per cent pay rise, causing an estimated 350,000 appointments to be cancelled (on top of the more than seven million already waiting for treatment), are signing up in their droves. Last year, a poll by the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents 45,000 junior doctors, found that more than a third planned to move abroad in 2023. And where are they going? Some 42 per cent said they were heading to Australia.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/15/nhs-doctors-australia-emigrate/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

[northwestman]

link.news.inews.co.uk/public/31170468

Nurses' defiance shows the Tories have radicalised our underpaid and understaffed NHS.

Good article.

If waiting lists end up getting longer, voters may just ask why the hell the Government hadn’t paid NHS staff more to sort things out sooner.

Speaking of waiting lists, we learned on Thursday that they are now at a record high. And they’re not the only one of the PM’s five New Year pledges that have been looking pretty fragile of late. Stopping the boats? Last week saw the highest number of migrants travelling across in a single day in 2023, with 492 refugees in 11 vessels.

Halving inflation? The rate actually went up in February. Falling debt? The IMF warned on Wednesday that debt would steadily rise in the UK. Growing the economy? GDP growth in February was precisely 0.0 per cent, new stats showed on Thursday.