I’m a doctor, trust me!

An interesting statistic that recently came to light when Hospital Doctor polled their readership was that fully 33% of medics had private health insurance, preferring to be treated privately and not by the NHS.

That is a very interesting figure when you realise that the BMA (the doctors union) have been campaigning for years to keep private providers away from the NHS.  You can only draw one conclusion from this behaviour; the stated reason for their rejection of anything private in the NHS is a lie.  Why are they prepared to lie about this?  Competition.  Interestingly, the unions have convinced many people that they should not be subjected to competition in healthcare.  They continually point the finger at the United States and say look what has happened there do we want that?  They fail, understandably, to point out that France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and many other European states have competition in healthcare.  Most of these countries would be considered far more liberal than us.  In France fully 40% of healthcare is provided by the private sector and outcomes there, cleanliness, respect for the patient all leave us far behind.

No matter what smoke screen the defenders of the status quo can create.  The truth behind he creation of such an effective screen is solely based on self-preservation at the expense of the patient and our quality of care.

If the NHS is such a wonderful system then why would doctors 1. Have to have insurance, and 2. Worry about competition.  The choice would be clear wouldn’t it?  It sure does seem clear to the doctors!

Beware the rabid dog……….

Yesterday evening I stumbled across a blog called Dr. Rant.  The author says that he is a NHS doctor.  I won’t use the language contained on the site here but the link is above for those who want to experience it for themselves, it is vile.  The names that are used to describe the people the site does not like are infantile, the views expressed on the site full of hatred and malice.  Understandable given these doctors feel very hard done by?  Even if they weren’t the highest paid doctors in the world with one of the best pension packages on the planet, the language and venom they use to express the hatred they excrete is truly incredible.

It would appear the authors of this blog, and there are supposedly others, feel they can be haters of all things and individuals that would even remotely ask them to account for the many thousands of pounds they receive each year.  Call for their death, use unspeakable language, and then return serenely to the surgery to care for us, their patients with compassion and understanding.  I would suggest this is impossible.  What you see is what you get with these individuals.  In the same way they hide their identity on the website, they also hide their real feelings for the patient in the surgery.  Don’t think for a minute that the patient isn’t, in their minds, a large part of the problem.  I find it impossible to believe these individuals change that much from the time they write their blog to the time they see patients.

Militants have always been a part of the British union movement.  It would appear however that we have now entered a new era where highly paid professionals find it appropriate to hide behind union activism to insure their way of life is protected even if it means patients are put at risk.

I will leave it to you to read the blog and come to your own conclusions.  If you do, remember these people who are calling people names, accusing everyone, except for themselves and their colleagues, of being the reason the NHS is so dysfunctional are the people you depend on to take care of you.  I am not suggesting that these individuals represent even 10% of the health services doctors.  The problem however is that they are the ones who, the majority of the time, set the BMA’s policy and direction.

It is a tried and tested defence of those who have much to hide, to attack as hard and fast as possible.  Use every underhanded and terrible tactic at your disposal because you will immediately take the decent people off the pitch.  This group has that tactic down pat, and don’t think for a moment their hatred of those who disrupt their cosy environment is limited to politicians, managers, and civil servants.  We are on that list as well.  Closer to the top than you might imagine.

Thank god the unions know what’s right for us……

I have copied a response by the union Unite to a report prepared by Lord Ara Darzi who was brought into government by Gordon Brown.  The big difference with this lord?  He’s also a doctor, practicing surgeon.  You would have thought that would put oil on the troubled waters with unions, you are right to think it hasn’t.  

Unites’ response to a part of his report is below.  Apparently one of Darzi’s recommendations is that the patient should hold the budget for their care.  You mean actually get to spend our own money?  Well that’s a step forward.  Not for Unite, it is a huge step back.  Read the response.  We, the patient, are not fit to make our own choice about healthcare because we can’t “critically evaluate a research report”!  What?????  You have to be able to do that to choose appropriate care????  I would imagine that the Unite’s leadership who parade around as healthcare workers can’t even read the report much more understand it.  Do people have to understand the science behind food to make the right choice for dinner?  No, and yet it is a staple of life just in the same way healthcare is.  Doctors and unions would have you beleive that healthcare is so complicated that we mere mortals can’t even begin to fathom the complexities.  This flies in the face of current research with people who have long-term conditions that shows the patient has far more incite into their condition than does the doctor in most cases.

I would suggest we can’t make a choice because Neanderthals like Unite don’t want us to.  It would erode their power-base and the union’s income.  Remember these people think nothing of protecting the staff in Kent who let 90 people die in their own excreta.  

Even Castro’s brother is starting to dismantle the old Cuban communist state.  Why do we have to live with the remnants of it here?  In a democracy?  These people are vermin who play to our fears, use innuendo and lies to get what they want, and would rather put our lives at risk than change their 19th century view of the world.

Read the response below, the full response to the Darzi report is on Unites website. 

 

Personal Budgets 

A damaging suggestion is that patients should hold their own personal budgets, including NHS 

resources (page 33). There are real and obvious risks here, unless we also give patients the skills to 

critically evaluate research studies.

And yet the real culprits are us……..

If you do a little surfing on a Sunday evening, you will come across a lot of web site that are proclaiming “keep our NHS public”.  They have good access to politicians, tend to be backed by one of the public sector unions, and have crippled the debate on healthcare, and kept from the public view the real data on the health services performance.  They rarely mention that our cancer care and heart care rates are basically third world in terms of survivability and the responsiveness of the service to trying and cure issues associated with those two broad disease groups.  

If you don’t think we are very behind the times.  Take, what is today, a very routine and uncomplicated diagnostic test that if done correctly and quickly can save your life if you are a woman, the cervical smear.  Want to guess how long you have to wait for the result to this test in the UK?  Remember, you have gone in to see if you have a type of cancer, well the AVERAGE time is 5 weeks.  Want to guess what the time in France, Germany and most of the other western European countries?  5 days.  Why is this?  It’s because the NHS has failed to reform itself.  Take Lord Patrick Carter, even with the fancy name the guy was an owner of nursing homes, gave a lot to the Labour Party, well, you know the rest.  He was asked to do a review of the pathology service within the NHS.  Why he was asked is hard to tell given his background.  Until recently he ran Sport England!  Anyway, his report out this year said that there should be some changes, didn’t say how, and never pointed to the person who would carry it out. We had a review though.  Let Lord Carter do a job for a few months and feel important, but other than that, women who are worried they might have cancer continue to wait 5 weeks.  Do the pathologists care?  Hell no.  Politicians?  No.  Doctors?  No.  Only the poor woman who is forced to wait 5 weeks for something her French counterpart can have in 5 days.

You might be thinking at this point that of all the procedures carried out by the NHS this is a small if insignificant complaint.  Actually my point is that this is one of the easy ones to fix.  The harder ones are the big stuff like MRI scans and the other big ticket diagnostics.  Have you ever pulled up to your local NHS hospital and after paying exorbitant amount to park, looked up to see a large trailer parked next to the Hospital with mobile MRI written on it?  Well those tend to be privately owned MRI’s that are supplementing the NHS MRI, if they have one.  If you ask the trust why they need and extra MRI, as I did recently, you get the answer that they don’t have enough money, or staff, or that their training is not up to scratch.  After a time I stopped listening, the list was longer that I could remember.  I happened to see one of the technicians from the MRI in a box, and ask her why they were there.  She stated that they or someone else did this for the majority of hospitals in England and some in Scotland because the NHS were, in her words, “too lazy to run their MRI efficiently”.  I ask what she meant by that.  On her summary, it would appear the NHS MRI at the hospital in question would have a leisurely opening at 10 and close by 12 for a 2 hour lunch and once again see patients to 4 so the work force (and I guess that might be a little tongue in cheek) could get home by 5.

On the other hand the private MRI opened at 7 and continued to see patients until 7 in the evening, sometimes later if required by a doctor.  The technician went on to say that this was not uncommon across the NHS.  There was little incentive to increase productivity.  It was interesting to hear that although the government had set reasonably tight targets around waiting times that since there was nothing that required the NHS to pull it’s collective socks up from an efficiency perspective, they were increasingly turning to the private sector to bail them out of trouble and help hit the government targets.  Company’s like hers had seen a three fold increase in business over the last few years, and she insisted it wasn’t privatisation but purely NHS spend to help them out of a hole.

Having a loved one in the hospital recently which was the catalyst for this blog incidentally, brought home to me how ineffective NHS staff really are.  When you challenge a nurse and ask why your family member has not receiving even the basic care they deserve, the majority of the time I would get one if not all of three excuses.  

1.  There is not enough money

2.  The Government targets get in the way of me doing my job

3.  The management of the hospital are too worried about costs

I listened to all of these for the first week my Grandmother was in hospital.  Then I began to challenge these statements.  I wanted to know why, at a time of massive investment, there wasn’t enough money.  The usual response was that the government is lying about the real figure.  I don’t think so.  I would also ask how that was responsible for nurses not doing their job?  It usually came back to money and the management at that point, or the targets made them do things they didn’t want to.  If that was the case, didn’t they have a duty to tell the government to get stuffed and take are of their patient?   Well that was all too difficult really.  I started to ALWAYS ask this questions; why are you so vocal when it comes to blackmailing the government for more money for yourselves?  Never have received an answer to that even though it is true.  Go to Unisons website.  They NEVER talk about the patients welfare unless it is in the context of trying to keep the private sector out of the NHS or more pay for their nurses.

My point is that the doctors and nurses have it all their own way now.  Look at the hapless David Cameron and the simpleton who is shadow health secretary, Lansley.  They have both become NHS apologists.  They would also have you believe that it is the poor doctors and nurses who have been hard done by not the patient.  They seem not to realise that there are 60 million patients, and only 1.3 million NHS employees.

If the NHS is to change, and it needs to so that we and our loved ones stop dying needlessly, we will all have to get involved and help turn the tide onto the side of the patient.

What is wrong with private healthcare?

If you beleive the propaganda spewed by the BMA (the doctor’s union, they were responsible for getting their membership the largest pay increase in public sector history and catapulting their members to the very top of the earning table globally!  Yes even higher paid than American doctors, and they work less hours!) Unison and others.  The provision of private healthcare is evil.  Hold on, for the BMA it is only evil when it could increase the efficiency or quality of care received by patients in the NHS.  Let’s face it, that would be a disaster for their members private practice which have thrived for decades on the back of an underperforming public system.  Could we really expect a surgeon who has been used to telling a patient, “Well the wait in the NHS is many months, but, I could see you privately next week if you are prepared to pay.”  Thank god we have an equal system that does not differentiate on your ability to pay like the nasty Americans.

How many of you have had that conversation with your doctor?  Or already know that the long wait, and now, the distinct possibility of death while receiving routine care from a hospital infection, would sensibly push you towards a private system where you won’t have to wait, there are private rooms, the chance of infection is either very slim or none at all, and the staff are polite and responsive.  The answer is about 10% of the population because they can afford it.

Unison and the BMA would like to keep it that way.  They have very privileged seats at the table because their members are in “the know”.  They know which hospitals, nurses and doctors are any good.  They know how to work the system so they don’t have to wait.  When it comes to the relatively uninformed patient population, we can’t have care paid for by the state in a private facility.  They apparently only offer good services that can’t be criticised when they are enriching BMA members.

I recently visited friends in the west country.  The person’s in question father had recently been operated on in a new private facility in Shepton Mallet.  He had a knee replacement.  His daughter had heard through neighbors that the facility existed, was available to NHS patients and was free.  Her neighbor informed her that the local NHS had not been forthcoming in advertising the fact the care was available and she had not been aware of it until her local care trust called to offer her Mother a place there for hip surgery.  her mother was on the local hospitals waiting list and had been told it could be a matter of months, possibly a year before she was offered a place for surgery.  When the care trust called she accepted the place and had her operation two weeks later.  It went without a hitch.  The care was outstanding and the facility was bright and clean, the staff friendly and helpful.

My friends father called his local GP to ask why he had not been given the option of going to the new hospital.  They replied that they didn’t know the doctors there very well and were reticent to send patients. He relayed the story of his Daughters friend and told them that was good enough for him, he had waited two years on an NHS waiting list for his last knee replacement, was becoming a greater burden on his family and wanted to get on with it.  They grudgingly gave him a number to call at the local care trust who told him that the GP should have given him that choice of hospital during his visit, that he should not had to call and ask to be seen.  They offered him a surgery date for his knee operation within 3 weeks.

I spoke to him while we were there and he enjoyed the experience of being treated in a hospital he could not normally afford care in.  He said the doctor who saw him was as knowledgeable as his NHS consultant and more attentive.  he is back up and active once again leading a far more productive life than before.  he is angry that the NHS decided for him that he should have to sit bedridden in his home when there wasn’t any need.

Unison and the BMA don’t want patients to experience this type of care as it undermines their power base and begins to help fix the broken NHS by shinning a light on the very poor care and access that is offered by the traditional NHS.  If the NHS becomes a functional system that does what is best for the patient and not what is best for the healthcare workers union, they will have nothing that will attract members to an already outdated and irrelevant group of organisations.  Also, the consultants will begin to see their million pound private practices begin to erode, and they might just have to start scaling back on the expansion plans for their third homes.

But we the patients should keep our mouths shut.  Not complain, be happy with our lot in life and allow ourselves to continue to be the political football they use to maintain the status quo even if it means we sit in our bed for two years, a burden to our families, with little or no quality of life for ourselves.  Unless, of course, we can find the money to jump the queue.  Thank god we don’t have a two tiered system!

And the truth shall set you free……..

Below I have copied a typical piece of UNISON, the healthcare workers union, propaganda.  If you read the piece you will notice that they contradict themselves in several of the arguments, especially in paragraphs 4 and 5.  In para 4 they argue that foundation trusts (FT’s) are not good value for money because it costs more for them to borrow from the private sector (you will discover a theme in Unison propaganda, the private sector is responsible for everything bad and should be avoided at all cost).  In para 5 they say that foundation trusts will keep their surpluses and will therefore make it harder for non FT’s to “compete”  This is like having your cake and eat it too.  The argument does not stack up.  If FT’s are indeed not good value for money and they have borrowed from the private sector at higher rates, why do they have surpluses?  By the way none of this has happened.  FT’s have not turned to banks to borrow; they do however have excess cash that they are reinvesting in the hospital’s infrastructure and staff.  In para 6 UNISON would have you believe that being financially prudent, paying attention to your costs as well as your patients and their care is BAD.  Of course it is for their members who are the reason the rest of the NHS has flat to negative improvement in efficiency.  The other more ludicus argument is that they will pay people more money and steal away staff .  How can they do this if their cost base is so high?  Won’t this work to the benefit of the non FT’s?  It would if their arguments were not lies.  Under Unison’s view of the world all their members should care about is “caring for the patient”.  At Maidstone where 90 died, you can see the result of this mind set.

The problems with the NHS are the unions.  They are stopping necessary reform so they can supply to their members an easy life free of any responsibility for patient care, don’t forget it is ALWAYS the manager, politician, nasty private sector, who causes these issues not the neglect or uncaring nature of their membership.  Unison and it’s refusal to embrace even the most benign reforms is harming patients.  The other theme in Unison propaganda is that they ALWAYS need more money.  We will talk about that soon.

 

Below is the Unison argument against FT’s

Foundation hospitals

The issues – foundation hospital trusts and marketisation

In 2003 the government introduced legislation to allow the best performing hospitals to become foundation trusts, independent bodies with freedoms to set wages and attract private funding. The first foundation trusts were introduced in 2004.There are seven reasons why UNISON has continued to oppose foundation trusts.

Reason 1: Foundation trusts compete as part of a commercial market

Foundation trusts operate in a competitive, commercial market in the NHS. In this market primary care trusts (PCTs) buy services from a range of different providers across the public and private sectors, including NHS trusts, foundation trusts and privately run diagnostic and clinical centres. As foundation trusts have more freedoms to invest in services and health facilities than other health competitors it is likley that competition will become a ‘one-horse race’.UNISON is concerned services will suffer and harmful competition could lead to a two-tier health service and the possible closure of smaller general hospitals.

Reason 2: Foundation trusts are a backdoor to privatisation

Foundation trust status creates a backdoor to privatisation by allowing private and voluntary organisations, such as BUPA, to apply for a licence to run a foundation trust.UNISON is concerned the threat of increased privatisation in the health service could lead to the outsourcing of some or all health services to the private sector.

Reason 3: Foundation trusts will not lead to greater local accountability or social ownership

NHS hospitals were already owned by and run for the benefit of the whole public. The governance framework for foundation trusts does not lead to greater local accountability or social ownership. For example, foundation trusts are able to run with only a very small number of members in relation to the population that uses them.UNISON is concerned that foundation trusts do not represent the communities they serve.

Reason 4: Foundation trusts are poor value for money

Foundation trusts have freedoms to borrow privately which costs more than if they borrowed from the public sector. Private investment does not lead to increased total levels of investment, as the private sector borrowing counts towards the overall capital allocations agreed between the Department of Health and the Treasury.UNISON is concerned that public finance will simply be replaced by more expensive private finance, leading to higher costs and no overall increase in the level of NHS capital investment.

Reason 5: Foundation trusts lead to greater inequalities between trusts

Foundation trusts have greater powers and freedoms than NHS trusts which leads to inequalities in the health service. For example, they are able to keep all operating surpluses and asset sale proceeds themselves, whereas under the current system surpluses go to a central NHS funding pool from where they are redistributed to wherever the need in the NHS is the greatest.UNISON believes the levels of private borrowing by foundation trusts leads to decreased funding for non-foundation trusts.

Reason 6: Foundation trusts draw scarce staff away from non-foundation trusts

Foundation trusts have greater powers to raise private funds and set wage levels and will therefore be able to exercise additional flexibility on pay, leading to these hospitals drawing scarce staff away from Trusts that do not have Foundation status.UNISON is concerned that trusts without foundation status will have difficulty recruiting and retaining staff. This will undermine their performance and increase their reliance on temporary staff.

Reason 7: Foundation trusts undermine the NHS’s public service principles

Foundation Trusts undermine the provision of an integrated and planned health service and reinforce inequalities in access to health care. They will have an extremely negative impact on the NHS and staff as there is an emphasis on meeting financial needs rather than health needs.UNISON is concerned that foundation trusts damage services and harmful competition is leading to a two-tier health service.

 

Sex, Lies, and Videotape…..

The health worker unions who are desperately trying to maintain the status quo in the NHS often use disinformation to make their points, or outright lie.  They love to compare the NHS to other health delivery systems and with little or no or carefully chosen data, demonstrate what a great deal the British taxpayer is getting for their £104 billion a year.  They then argue that the NHS is a mess, completely ruined by the politicians, private sector, and anything or anyone else who are not associated with them.  What a great existence!  No responsibility for anything.  Reminds me of the kids when they are standing next to a broken vase on the floor that crashed to the ground and broke when they ran into it.  They always told me it wasn’t their fault.  I can except that from a 5 year old, but adults?

The US system has been the most fertile ground for providing ammunition to an arsenal that is devoid of fact, yet intended to fill the audience with fear.  Let’s examine several of the lies that are told to the British population by healthcare unions, politicians, and NHS leaders.

“There are 40 million people in the United States without health insurance.”  This is true and the number factual.  The inference is that all of these people do not have access to healthcare.  Let’s examine first the composition of that number and second the reality behind the inference.

It is true that 40 million people do not have paid for private healthcare insurance in the US.  Many of those 40 million actively choose not to.  They are younger Americans who feel that at their stage in life it is not needed.  This decision can be a disastrous one if they are the victims of an accident, but they have exercised their right to make a choice about what they would like to do for themselves.  Another not insignificant percentage of this number are those who are between jobs and will pick-up coverage when they take-up their new posts.  It is true that a number are people who can’t afford health insurance.  This group however is covered by insurance provided by the state, a product called Medicaid.  Because it isn’t a private product they do not get counted as having private insurance.

The largest lie that unions and others use to inject fear into the patient population is that these 40 million people must die in their homes, hovels, boxes, or wherever they live because the big bad private sector won’t see them.  This is an outright lie.  It is against Federal law, and punishable by 10 years in prison for a healthcare provider in the US to refuse to see a patient based on the ability to pay.  The effect of this is that usually people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale get very good treatment, and are never turned away.

In the UK, access to healthcare for the less fortunate members of society is abysmal.  In Germany or France, you are not forced to go to your local hospital for what in most other nations, with the exception of fewer and fewer ex soviet block states, is routine investigations.  The factory worker who must bring home his wages to make ends meet is unlikely to take the time and cost (parking fees, bus fares, petrol) to go to an antiquated District General Hospital for tests.  It is more likely he will avoid the cost, disinterested staff and wasting of his time at all costs.  This is real health inequality in a nation that prides itself on the “free at the point of use” slogan.

Until we stop allowing the Doctors, Nurses and politicians to use other countries as smoke and mirrors to hide the extreme deficiencies in our system, change will never come and patients will continue to not get the care they deserve and some will die as a result.

The Patient Must Come First

How many of you when you use an NHS facility, meet NHS staff, feel that you are at the top of their list of priorities?  The tragedy at Maidstone should confirm that the patient is consistently at the bottom of that list.  If the NHS, and that includes doctors and nurses, cared about patients, they would not have allowed over 90 patients to die in their own excreta.

I hope we begin to shine the light of truth into the dark recesses of the NHS and expose the union movement and its supporters for what they are.  Maintainers of the status quo, power mongers and thoughtless defenders of their antiquated turf.