Going, going, gone.

Going

Going

Gone…..

Right now, if you go to a private hospital as a private patient, you normally go to see a consultant who is hiring a room or basic equipment. They do simple operations on healthy people. They do complicated operations or operations on high risk people, but it takes planning and they have to hire subcontracted staff as well. Medical procedures don’t follow plans. Those private hospitals are rarely capable of dealing with intensive care (ICU), resuscitation, or emergency work. They don’t have 24 hour back up. Doctors and Nurses only come in when they are hired to do so.  That’s why private hospitals are often near NHS ones – it’s easier to get hold of staff at short notice.

When things go wrong, it doesn’t go so well. If there’s an emergency, private patients use the NHS.

At the moment we are paying consultants £120,000 to £250,000 a year. They do work at weekends or at night but don’t like it (understandable) but as we’ve seen, they are quite keen to take on private work at those times.

They don’t want to use private hospitals because they don’t like their patients dying – they would prefer to do those operations in NHS hospitals, then if there is a problem rush the patient into ICU or A and E.

So, the private patients jump the queue to start with (it’s the same consultants as in the NHS and they only have so much time) then when it all goes wrong they jump another queue into Intensive care etc., leaving the rest of us to wait. (No beds, I’m afraid).

Consultants can only be at one place at a time – if they are sloping off to have a look at their private patients in the ‘special wing’, who’s to know? Who will be their priority?

One of the perks of being the manager of a ‘Foundation trust’ is the ability to set your own salary, to write yourself a cheque. Now we can see where it comes from – it’s a business.

The private patients jump the queue but only have to pay for those services they need, when they need them. Meanwhile the stupid taxpayer picks up all the rest of the bills for the really expensive permanent costs that never go away (buildings, equipment, staff costs 365 days a year 24/7).

And the NHS gets to sort out all those really expensive emergencies.

 

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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