The article below came from ‘The Independent’ today although
the medical Director of NHS London has been very busy briefing the press today
and appeared just now (1900hrs) on Channel Four News.
For good measure, my inability to sleep wasn’t helped by
listening to BBC News 24 last week where Sir David Nicholson appeared on ‘HardTalk’,
a half hour interview. There, he was reading from the same page, only arguing
for nationwide hospital closures.
As a result I’ve put a couple of old articles up on ‘Pages’
on the right hand side of this Blog – setting out the arguments as to why
shutting A and E’s is a death sentence for many.
Nicholson should have long gone by now but he has stayed on.
It’s to push this argument – he’s touting for a seat in the house of lords and
some nice part-time QUANGO jobs after he’s gone.
During his ‘HardTalk’ interview he had no answer as to why
2000 of his NHS managers earn more than the Prime Minister or why he will not
accept responsibility for the scandal at Mid-Staffs NHS Trust which was part of
his responsibility.
What he said was the NHS must consult with the public and yet
not be constrained by elections. What he meant by that is that the NHS should
be free of any democratic control which will be replaced by sham consultation
exercises which all health service campaigners are very familiar with.
Kashmira
Gander
Sunday 13 October 2013
The medical director of the NHS for the
capital has warned that services are at “breaking point” and that patients are
unsafe.
Dr Andy
Mitchell has said that London’s health system is “unsustainable” the day before
NHS England will publish a report stating that it can no longer afford to staff
all of its hospitals at safe levels.
In an
interview with The Sunday Times, Dr Mitchell stated that the public must face
up to the reality that hospitals are overstretched and that patients receive an
inadequate service.
“They don’t
understand how watered down these services are. What we cannot do is carry on
with the idea that all hospitals provide a whole range of services. That is
completely unsustainable and would become, frankly, unsafe, and is becoming
unsafe in many areas.
“The public
isn’t really sufficiently aware, that many places don’t meet acceptable
standards of care. The expectation is that, as they walk into hospital, they
get high-quality service, and in fact, they don’t in many places,” he said.
He admitted
he felt anxious about revealing the system’s safety issues because of his
“responsibility to change it and improve it” but stated that his team “are trying
to patch up all the time.”
However, a
report by NHS England says the health service cannot afford to staff all its
hospitals at safe levels, especially at weekends.
A
combination of zero financial growth forecast for the NHS and increasing demands
from an ageing and growing population means the public needs to accept that
hospitals must be shut or downgraded to medical centres, according to the document.
Current
problems in London are seen as a symptom for problems that will blight the
country as a whole, with health chiefs forecasting that half the capital's causality
departments will have to shut to make the service sustainable. Sir David
Nicholson, the outgoing chief executive of NHS England, has warned of a massive
funding gap if NHS services are run in the same way as they are now, with the
report revealing that maintaining hospitals at their current standard would
lead to a £4 billion shortfall over the next seven years in London, a gap that
will be part of a £30 billion funding gap by 2020 across the country.
The number
of hospitals offering emergency surgery and treating patients who have suddenly
become seriously ill must also be reduced. Meanwhile paediatric and maternity
departments need to be cut and centralised, making it easier to staff
institutions at safe levels. The remainder will become urgent care centres run
by GPs to deal with minor injuries and out –of-hours calls.
Shadow Health
Secretary Andy Burnham said: “The severity of this funding crisis is entirely
of David Cameron’s making. People pleaded with him to stop the reorganisation
so the NHS could focus on the financial challenge. He refused to listen and
threw the entire system into chaos. The result has been three lost years in the
NHS and billions wasted on back-office restructuring.”
We’ve got a very big fight on our hands.
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutthenhs.blogspot.com
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