£1.50p well spent

If you have £1.50p to spare, do buy a copy of this week's Private Eye.

The magazine has an excellent, well researched and highly readable account of the government's massively expensive, useless and dysfunctional IT system Connecting for Health which is currently bankrupting the NHS but making some computer boffins very rich indeed.

I quote from the introduction:

"Waste and inefficiency in the NHSis intolerable",declared Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt one year ago amid mounting deficits."A penny wasted is a penny stolen from a patient". This is the story of the theft of 1,240,000,000,000 pennies from patients through an IT project that wasn't wanted and doesn't work. It tells how political vanity, official incompetence and vested interests have wreaked havoc on the health service - and calls for a halt to the ultimate in a long line of New Labour computer cock-ups before it's too late.

Please read this important article

Thanks

My friend Dr Bob Hodges has sent me this:

Take a bow, Wayne

Wayne Jaffe is a distinguished plastic andreconstructive surgeon: this story is from the Daily Telegraph.

A NHS surgeon today exposed how cash-strapped hospitals were being barred from operating on cancer patients who had not waited long enough.

Wayne Jaffe laid the blame for the appalling state of affairs at the feet of Tony Blair, with his vision of reduced waiting times and 24-hour surgery. In a withering assessment of the financial management of the health service, Mr Jaffe said that doctors were being restricted in getting waiting lists down by financial limitations and ever-changing targets.

The consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon, who specialises in skin cancer and breast reconstruction, said he and his colleagues are being prohibited from operating in non-urgent cases unless the patient has been waiting for a minimum of 20 weeks.

This is because the hospital would not get paid – even if the patient and staff were ready for the operation.

Mr Jaffe said the Prime Minister's pledge to have patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks between referral and treatment would be "impossible" unless more money was made available to primary care trusts.

He rubbished the Government's vision of 24-hour surgery, saying that after normal working hours only a skeleton staff was available.

"We are trying to do what the Prime Minister wants us to do but we cannot do it properly because there is no money," he said.

"Waiting lists will only go up if, as is the case, doctors cannot perform operations unless the patient has been waiting for more than 20 weeks. It's absurd."

Mr Jaffe, who works at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, said the 20-week ruling was a "global issue" within the NHS and not just a problem at UHNS. He claimed that he was unable to fill his evening lists because of the 20-week constraint, and that patients were having to wait longer to be seen than necessary.

He said: "Doctors across the country are talking about the same thing and it's happening everywhere."

Saving her own neck

This story appears in today's Sunday Telegraph:

Almost half of NHS hospitals across England are now deliberately delaying operations to save money.

Patricia Hewitt, the beleaguered Health Secretary, has vowed to resign if the NHS fails to balance its books by the end of the financial year
Patricia Hewitt has vowed to resign if the NHS fails to balance its books by the end of the financial year

"Minimum waiting times" have been imposed by at least 43 per cent of Acute NHS Trusts, a survey for Channel 4's Dispatches programme found. Treatments are often postponed for more than 20 weeks, despite staff and equipment being available.



So Mrs Hewitt has cynically decided to save her own neck rather than provide timely care to NHS patients waiting for treatment

Closer to home?

One of the cornerstones of Mrs Hewitt's deranged plans for the NHS is that care should be provided "closer to home". If this really is the masterplan, then how does she explain that the number of health visitors has fallen to the lowest numbers for twelve years, and that training places for health visitors have been cut by 40%.

What is Mrs Hewitt's real vision for the NHS? I think that we are entitled to know.

What's going on?

It is difficult for an outsider to really understand what is going on in the NHS at the moment, but there are a number of excellent "blogs" on the web written from the coal face. None of them, in my opinion "tells it how it is" better than www.drrant.net

It uses, I am afraid, some strong language, but it is well worth reading.

Today in parliament

There was a debate in parliament today, and I quote vertatim the contribution of Alistair Burt, MP for North Bedfordshire:

Last summer, the trust decided that it could not replace an orthopaedic surgeon, but the flow of orthopaedic work did not diminish as expected. At Christmas time, staff were made redundant and wards were closed—that happened under Labour, I remind the Minister. Now, in the new year, it suddenly appears that there is so much orthopaedic work to be done that patients’ waiting times will hit the cliff edge of the new 18-week target that has been agreed, so more money has been found in order to make sure that that does not happen.

In fact, the treatments proposed will be more expensive than would have been the case if the trust had been able to replace the consultant and follow a normal pattern of work from summer until the end of the year. More money will go into the private sector, and money will be spent on evening operations if the staff can be found to do them, because Bedford Hospital NHS Trust is now readvertising for staff whom they sacked just a few weeks ago in the round of cuts at Christmas time. If the Minister can sit before us and think that he is presiding over an efficient and effective national health service as far as economics and financing are concerned, I am extremely surprised at him. He has a mess in those regards, which he must deal with. How can we have any confidence in the review if that is the economic basis underpinning it and under which hospitals will run?

Well said, Alistair