Witnessing the end of the NHS

[djnotts]

Just one small example of waiting lists/times. GP referral to specialist Jan 2024. 1st appointment March. Deferred to mid-July, now to 30 Dec (presumably to keep under "1 year" stats).
Not "urgent" but nonetheless damages my quality of life. For one aspect I paid for a private consultation, but not everyone has that choice.

[axel_knutt]

short-term decisions are made to help as many patients as possible under the immediate pressures. The condition of the estate and the backlog of equipment are disgraceful but patients need staff right now.

Which, as Steve Black points out, just leads to an army of staff wasted doing unproductive work, because patients still need keeping alive whilst they're not being treated (or effectively treated). According to Black just one hospital in the UK has a computer system to monitor the patients' passage through the hospital in real time, from admission to discharge, and identify the places where the bottlenecks occur. Without that, you can't direct resources to the places where they're most productive.

Don't go to Scotland on holiday, according to consultant Gordon Caldwell, NHS Scotland can't access NHS England patient records.

Paul Johnson of the IFS was saying that the NHS is the most undermanaged health service in the world on R4 last week, and also bemoaning the parlous state of NHS IT.

And yet the perennial trope with the Great British public is "get rid of the managers and hire more doctors & nurses", so democracy just does what the voters will vote for.

Just one small example of waiting lists/times. GP referral to specialist Jan 2024. 1st appointment March. Deferred to mid-July, now to 30 Dec (presumably to keep under "1 year" stats).
Not "urgent" but nonetheless damages my quality of life. For one aspect I paid for a private consultation, but not everyone has that choice.

Just one small example of waiting lists/times. GP referral to cardiology summer 2021. First appointment.....not yet.

[reohn2]

Unemployed GPs:- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgg1wzpve2o

[djnotts]

And it's only going to get worse.

"The Observer leads with what it calls a "bleak" verdict by the health think tank, the Nuffield Trust, external, of the Labour and Conservative manifesto commitments on NHS funding.

The paper says the analysis - that both the parties would leave the health service worse off than in the "austerity" years - will add to a growing sense that neither is "coming clean with voters about the true implications of their tax and spending policies"." (BBC News)

Tory and Starmer's Party both pretending to have invented a new mathematics. Spend more without raising income. Bit like my credit card I assume?

[Stradageek]

Small example of where privatisation is the culprit:

My wife has a routine OAP blood test indicating high cholesterol followed immediately by a text saying 'Click here to order your statins'.

She rings the surgery to say, 'how's about I change my diet and lose weight instead of popping pills'. She is rebuffed with 'that never works'.

Enraged wife changes diet, loses weight and cholesterol plummets to normal.

Further research indicates that prescribing statins earns the surgery a bonus for each person prescribed. Advice on diet gets paid nothing.

I wonder which pharmaceutical company convinced the government to reward statin prescriptions?

[Jdsk]

...
Further research indicates that prescribing statins earns the surgery a bonus for each person prescribed. Advice on diet gets paid nothing.
...

It's worth checking the facts of the payment scheme, "QOFs" in England:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/u ... 024-25.pdf
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/lipid-mo ... ndicators/

Previous discussion:
viewtopic.php?p=1780747#p1780747

Jonathan

[gbnz]

Small example of where privatisation is the culprit:

Fair enough, GP's do operate on a commercial basis, the priority has to be to boost turnover & margin

Am always amused that my GP's medical input onto my medical record or contact with myself in past 6 years, consists almost entirely of multiple entries of "Coded entry - New registration check done and claimable". Though had a GP respond to a toe nail infection, in 2019

Suppose GP's haven't been involved with 50+ emergency ambulance rides, two dozen broken bones, drowning, collapsed lungs, several near deaths in that period. Though obviously each & every hospital admission or whatever, is always accompanied by the "Coded entry - New registration check done and claimable" from the GP practice. They must love that secure income stream, c/w no involvement

Would have loved it when managing sports fields, to have couple of hundred sports pitches I had no involvement with, producing a cash reward for every letter received, stating "the grass is a bit long"

[Cugel]

Small example of where privatisation is the culprit:

My wife has a routine OAP blood test indicating high cholesterol followed immediately by a text saying 'Click here to order your statins'.

She rings the surgery to say, 'how's about I change my diet and lose weight instead of popping pills'. She is rebuffed with 'that never works'.

Enraged wife changes diet, loses weight and cholesterol plummets to normal.

Further research indicates that prescribing statins earns the surgery a bonus for each person prescribed. Advice on diet gets paid nothing.

I wonder which pharmaceutical company convinced the government to reward statin prescriptions?

The corruption engendered and fertilised by the profit motive and its vast raft of supporting and enabling legal and cultural conventions is legion. It's so bad that many a silly human will insist that, "Nothing would be done or invented if the profit motive wasn't dominant".

Personally I find dozens of human motives driving all sorts of useful and productive behaviours, services, goods and other human doings & productions. Of course, many of them are ignored, disapproved of or even forbidden by the hegemony of those who find that the profit motive fits their uncaring, exploitative personality and lust for riches at any price ('scuse pun).

I'd be interested to read here what motives for doing useful and productive things others feel are available and/or employed in their own lives and doings. Anyone care to givus some?

[Jdsk]

...
Suppose GP's haven't been involved with 50+ emergency ambulance rides, two dozen broken bones, drowning, collapsed lungs, several near deaths in that period. Though obviously each & every hospital admission or whatever, is always accompanied by the "Coded entry - New registration check done and claimable" from the GP practice. They must love that secure income stream, c/w no involvement
...

Is this in England? What do you think GPs are claiming for in which they haven't been involved?

(There might be a coded value in that line of entry.)

Jonathan

[Stradageek]

...
Further research indicates that prescribing statins earns the surgery a bonus for each person prescribed. Advice on diet gets paid nothing.
...

It's worth checking the facts of the payment scheme, "QOFs" in England:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/u ... 024-25.pdf
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/lipid-mo ... ndicators/

Previous discussion:
viewtopic.php?p=1780747#p1780747

Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan, if I've managed to decode the documents correctly then a GP can accumulate 'points' for dietary advice. So I may need to modify my assertion and postulate that it is at easier for a GP to send a text and assume that the statins are taken rather than have a face to face dietary conversation and check that advice is followed

[Jdsk]

...
Further research indicates that prescribing statins earns the surgery a bonus for each person prescribed. Advice on diet gets paid nothing.
...

It's worth checking the facts of the payment scheme, "QOFs" in England:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/u ... 024-25.pdf
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/lipid-mo ... ndicators/

Previous discussion:
viewtopic.php?p=1780747#p1780747

Thanks Jonathan, if I've managed to decode the documents correctly then a GP can accumulate 'points' for dietary advice. So I may need to modify my assertion and postulate that it is at easier for a GP to send a text and assume that the statins are taken rather than have a face to face dietary conversation and check that advice is followed

If I'm up to date on the relevant QOF then there's no requirement to prescribe a statin, let alone to try and discover whether it's been taken. The practice receives the same payment if the patient declines the offer as if they accept.

Jonathan

PS: I'm happy to try and explain why QOFs are there in the system...

[Stradageek]

Is this therefore an example of the mountainous and expensive beaurocracy required by the privatised elements of the NHS which is draining so much of the frontline cash?

[djnotts]

Perhaps Russian hackers can do the admin better?

".........the Guardian carries an exclusive story that the UK's National Crime Agency is "considering striking back" against a Russian ransomware gang who stole 300 million NHS patient records. The paper reports that the leak by the Qilin gang included "highly sensitive" data, like blood tests for HIV and cancer for patients at the London hospitals affected. A helpline has been set up to respond to questions amid "widespread alarm" over the hack, the Guardian says." (BBC News)

I'm not clear what causes the "alarm". Will the data be sold to US Big Pharma? Perhaps degraded so that appointments system fails (!)? Altered so that treatment is attributed to wrong patient? Links between NHS and GPs broken (but they don't work now)?

Don't think I'll bother the helpline......

[Jdsk]

...
".........the Guardian carries an exclusive story that the UK's National Crime Agency is "considering striking back" against a Russian ransomware gang who stole 300 million NHS patient records. The paper reports that the leak by the Qilin gang included "highly sensitive" data, like blood tests for HIV and cancer for patients at the London hospitals affected. A helpline has been set up to respond to questions amid "widespread alarm" over the hack, the Guardian says." (BBC News)

I'm not clear what causes the "alarm". Will the data be sold to US Big Pharma? Perhaps degraded so that appointments system fails (!)? Altered so that treatment is attributed to wrong patient? Links between NHS and GPs broken (but they don't work now)?
...

I don't know about "alarm" but there's been enormous disruption to patient care, and patients deserve to be told what's going on.

As far as we can tell the motive is ransom. The aggregated data wouldn't have enormous value. There will be some confidential information on individual politicians and celebrities.

Jonathan

[Psamathe]

...
I'm not clear what causes the "alarm". Will the data be sold to US Big Pharma? Perhaps degraded so that appointments system fails (!)? Altered so that treatment is attributed to wrong patient? Links between NHS and GPs broken (but they don't work now)?
...

Apart from the disruption to ongoing treatment, etc. I can appreciate the patient alarm, certainly until it is clarified exactly what information was stolen. But for identity theft all sorts of different information helps. Phone numbers (with a full name) allows scammers to start sending text messages trying to trap people into clicking links eg "A purchase of £287.43 to Expensive Carpets Ltd has been charged to your credit card. If this was not you click here below to stop the transaction" - and as it's quick I must stop this people think less about clicking and goving away card details, passwords, etc.

All information about you can help identity theft.

Some of the test results thought to have been stolen related to STD test results (some of which for some people will have been positive).

etc.

Ian