Another kind of 'Victory'.

This is a kind of ‘victory’; a recognition that car park charges at hospitals are a tax on staff, patients and their visitors. The only fair system is rationing spaces on need and using revenues from car parking to help those using public transport get to hospital.

 

BBC News 23 August 2014

Hospital car parking guidance to reduce some charges

Hospitals in England have been told to cut the cost of parking for certain groups under new government guidelines.

Ministers said relatives of people who were seriously ill or had to stay in hospital for a long time should be given free parking or reduced charges.

Concessions should also be offered to people with disabilities and NHS staff whose shift patterns meant they could not use public transport, they said.

Labour accused the coalition of dropping plans to scrap the charges.

Hospital parking policies are set by individual NHS trusts.

The Department of Health guidance made it clear trusts were responsible for the actions of private car parking contractors running facilities on their behalf.

'Rip-off' costs

 

The guidelines also recommended hospitals should use "pay-on-exit" schemes so motorists pay only for the time they use in a hospital car park.

And they say trusts should waive fines if a visitor or patient overstays through no fault of their own, for example because treatment took longer than planned, or when staff have to work beyond their scheduled shift.

 

“Hospital parking has become a stealth tax on the vulnerable”

Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow

 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "Patients and families shouldn't have to deal with the added stress of unfair parking charges.

"These clear ground rules set out our expectations, and will help the public hold the NHS to account for unfair charges or practices."

Mr Hunt had come under pressure from Conservative backbenchers to put an end to "rip-off" costs.

As part of that campaign, Harlow MP Robert Halfon sent Freedom of Information requests to almost 400 hospitals in England. The data he collected shows big differences in average costs across the country.

London had the highest charges, with an average of £20 a day and more than £130 a week.

The lowest charges were in the East Midlands, where parking costs were £3.50 per day and £11 per week.

Average patient and visitor parking charges in England

      Per hour Per day Per week

      Source: Freedom of Information requests compiled by Robert Halfon MP

      East of England  £2  £8.50  £25

      East Midlands    £1  £3.50  £11

      London                £2  £20     £131.50

      North East          £1  £3.50  £20.50

      North West        £2  £5.50  £19

      South East          £2  £9.50  £29

      West Midlands  £2  £6.50  £22.50

      Yorkshire            £1  £4.50  £29

 

Mr Halfon described the announcement as a "massive step forward" but said he wanted to see charges scrapped altogether, at a cost of £200m.

"Hospital parking has become a stealth tax on the vulnerable," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"The stories that we've had of people not being able to use the machines so they haven't been able to see their dying relatives is quite horrific and we have to make a change."

 

'Extortionate'

 

Ben Ruth, who received two parking tickets as he visited his dying father in the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, said the experience left him feeling "sickened".

"The second one was stuck on the windscreen when I left the hospital ward just after my father passed away," he said.

"I've rarely felt such rage as I felt right then. After the exceptional kindness of the medical staff in my father's ward, I felt grievously assaulted."

Macmillan Cancer Support said some patients were paying "extortionate" charges "in order to access treatment for a life-threatening illness".

Welcoming Mr Hunt's announcement, Duleep Allirajah - head of policy at the charity - urged hospitals not to ignore the guidance.

"Hospitals must... commit to implementing the guidelines as a matter of urgency so that cancer patients do not continue to pay unfair hospital parking charges," he said.

 

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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A leak in the west London Birthing pool.

This Evening Standard article highlights the cioncerns in West London over the wholesale closure of Accident and Emergency and Maternity departments.

The argument is that the creation of ‘super hospitals’ specialising in particular disciplines will result in better patient outcomes and economies of scale.

The problem is that A and E and maternity actually need to be local – it’s the complicated cases that need specialisms.

Any way things aren’t going well and they will get worse – lose either you’re a and E or your maternity department now – kiss your hospital goodbye in the next round of cuts;

 

Women giving birth in west London hospitals ‘face poor care and potential risks’

'Potential risks': a warning was issued about “inadequate” maternity care in

 

West London

Ross Lydall, Health Editor

Evening Standard

20 August 2014

A warning was issued today about “inadequate” maternity care in west London — ahead of services coming under further pressure with the axing of a busy unit.

Hospital inspectors said women giving birth at Northwick Park hospital, in Harrow, could not always summon help and the slow “pace of change” created “potential risks”. Caring was rated inadequate while the department, responsible for 5,600 births a year, “requires improvement” overall.

 

The Care Quality Commission’s report comes amid concerns at the wider impact of closing the maternity unit at Ealing hospital next summer. Most of its 2,800 births are expected to be split between Northwick Park and West Middlesex, in Hounslow, though emergency and complex cases will transfer to St Mary’s in Paddington.

 

Professor Sir Mike Richards, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, said senior staff had to be empowered to make changes in maternity and the A&E at Northwick Park, the biggest of three hospitals within North West London NHS trust.

Women told the CQC and reported in surveys that care fell below expectations.

The environment and equipment on paediatric wards also needed to be improved, inspectors said after their announced visit in May.

 

Sir Mike praised the trust’s “caring and compassionate” employees but said staff shortages made it difficult for them to meet individual needs. He added:

“Ongoing improvements to maternity services also need to be sustained, and further changes made at a much greater pace.”

 

The daytime-only A&E department at Central Middlesex hospital, in Harlesden, was rated “good” — weeks before it is due to be shut down. The leader of Ealing council today called on the trust to halt the closure on September 10.

 

Julian Bell said the report raised “serious questions” about the plan and said it would “push patients to a poorer service at Northwick Park”.

 

The CQC report ordered trust bosses to improve staffing levels in the A&E, surgery and critical care departments at Northwick Park and St Mark’s hospitals.

Overall, the trust “requires improvement” but its hyper-acute stroke unit was praised for providing a “gold-standard service”.

 

David McVittie, chief executive of the trust, said: “A significant amount of work is already under way to improve safety and effectiveness of care in our maternity unit. In addition, a new £21million A&E department will open at Northwick Park in the autumn.”

 

The Shaping A Healthier Future programme, which is centralising maternity and emergency care in “super-hospitals”, said: “We can give full assurance for women who are currently booked to have their baby at Ealing hospital to use the maternity unit with confidence.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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The benefits of privatisation.

This piece from ‘The Independent’ highlights the problems that are bubbling up from government policy to force hospitals to use private healthcare providers.

Then again for the Tories it’s been a success; it’s started the process of stealing the NHS from us and it’s made a lot of profits for their business friends and sponsors;

Dozens of NHS patients have been left with damage to their eyes, including partial loss of sight, after undergoing routine cataract operations which had been outsourced to a private provider.

 

A hospital in Somerset is now facing a slew of legal claims from patients who say they were left with problems including blurred vision, pain and swelling after undergoing cataract removal operations at a unit run by Vanguard Healthcare, which operated on the hospital site.

 

The scandal will raise serious questions about the Coalition Government’s plans to expand the role of private providers working in the NHS.

 

Vanguard had been under contract to Musgrove Park Hospital, in Taunton, since May to help clear a backlog of patients. Of 62 people who underwent cataract operations, 31 reported poor outcomes, according to lawyers for the patients. Cataract operations usually have a very low complication rate, typically around in one 400.

 

Laurence Vick, head of clinical negligence at Michelmores Solicitors, which is acting for a number of the patients affected, said the case “uncovered the uneasy relationship between the NHS and the private sector”.

 

“We don’t know what arrangements are in place for Musgrove to recoup their outlay and losses on this contract from Vanguard,” he said. “From the taxpayer’s point of view, it would be totally unreasonable for Vanguard to walk away from this scandal with only their reputation, and not their [investment], damaged… It is crucial that an episode of this kind is not dismissed as an anomaly – a hybridised, public-private NHS will need to be wary of similar issues in future.”

 

Patients affected are now having their side-effects treated at the hospital itself. Lawyers for some of the patients, most of whom were elderly and vulnerable, said it was likely the NHS Trust would have to pay for any successful compensation claims – meaning that the taxpayer would be footing the bill.

 

Among those affected was an 84-year-old man, whose son, Chris Newcombe, is now calling for an independent inquiry. Mr Newcombe says his father experienced blurred vision and swollen corneas after being operated on at the Vanguard mobile surgery unit.

 

Mr Newcombe told the Somerset County Gazette: “My father is traumatised and depressed with the loss of his eyesight. Previous pleasures of gardening and watching sport on the TV have now been taken away from him. This could have been prevented if the welfare of the patients had been thought about, rather than this urgency of just getting people through.”

 

His parents had “only praise and admiration” for staff at Musgrove’s own ophthalmology department, who have since been treating his father, he said.

 

The Trust said that due to an ongoing investigation into the matter, they could not comment “in detail on the sequence of events surrounding the unfortunate complications experienced by our patients receiving cataract surgery with Vanguard Healthcare in their mobile theatre at Musgrove Park Hospital. Our first and foremost concern has always been our patients, and particularly those who have experienced complications,” the statement said. “We have been in very close contact with them since the incident to ensure they are fully informed with our progress and receive the highest quality aftercare and treatment.”

 

Chief executive Jo Cubbon said that “early into the arrangement” with Vanguard in May, “technical issues in the facility had arisen and it became necessary to cease the service arrangements in place”.

 

Ian Gillespie, chief executive of Vanguard Healthcare, said: “Patient care is our number one priority and we’re working closely with the Trust to understand and fully investigate the root causes of any complications… Operations were carried out in Vanguard’s operating theatre by highly qualified surgeons, approved by the hospital.”

 

The Department for Health was yet to respond last night.

 

Profile: Vanguard

 

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Brockworth, Gloucester, Vanguard’s key service is the hire of mobile operating theatres, dedicated mobile endoscopy units, wards, and clinics to public and private hospitals. The company’s latest accounts show a £576,000 profit on sales of £11.3m in 2013, a rise of more than 10 per cent. Its 57 staff – 35 technical and 22 administrative – earned an average of almost £53,000.

 

Vanguard Executive Chairman and co-founder Andrew Allen, a chartered accountant, spent the past 20 years as owner/manager of healthcare businesses. According to Vanguard’s website “three of these businesses were backed by private equity, and realised returns upon exit well in excess of 30 per cent p.a. for investors”.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

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Waiting at the gate.

This is taken from ‘The Independent’ newspaper, based on labour party research.

Accident and Emergency departments have national guidelines limiting the time taken for patients to be admitted or discharged. They use many ruses to reduce this time; one of which is keeping patients waiting in ambulances outside.

So the clock doesn’t start ticking……

Hundreds of thousands of sick patients have been forced to wait in ambulances outside emergency units - some stranded for up to eight hours - according to new figures, because hospitals have been left "full to bursting".

Data obtained by the Labour Party show that patients are being cared for in vehicles outside A&E units for hours at a time, as “handover delays” continue to affect people up and down the country.

The new statistics, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, show that 280,000 patients suffered “handover delays” of at least 30 minutes during 2013/14, which includes 30,000 people who were forced to wait for an hour or more.

Information highlighting three areas where people were worst affected showed that patients had waited up to eight hours and 11 minutes in West Midlands to get to the emergency units.

Delays in other parts of the country showed people stranded in ambulances for seven and a half hours, while waits in London were over six hours.

 

 NHS England says ambulances could become 'more of a mobile treatment service'  Labour shadow health minister Jamie Reed told the Telegraph the figures show that under David Cameron, hospitals have become “full to bursting,” making ambulances queue at the doors for hours on end.

 

“Thousands of vulnerable people, many of them elderly and frightened, are being wrongly held in the backs of ambulances because hospitals don't have the space,” he said.

 

The figures show an 87 per cent rise in the number of people forced to wait over 30 minutes since 2010/11, and a 50 per cent rise in people waiting over an hour.

 

But the NHS England has countered the figures with its own data, claiming that the number of ambulance handover delays for the winter of 2013/14 were down on the previous year by 30 per cent. However, the data only covers the winter period.

 

An NHS England spokesperson said: “We know that demands on ambulances are rising every year, and we’re allocating a further £28 million to ambulance providers to help them deal with these pressures.

 

“However in some cases it may be the right thing to do for a patient to be cared for in the ambulance before transfer to stabilise their condition.”

NHS guidelines state that new arrivals to A&E should enter hospitals within 15 minutes, but NHS England said one of the aims of its Urgent and Emergency Care Review is to “capitalise on the skills and abilities of paramedics and the wider workforce so that ambulances can become more of a mobile treatment service, rather than just a transport service.”

Eh, no, I don’t think so – ambulances are only that; transport. It’s different to have paramedics doing triage but when the ambulance is at the hospital the patient needs to be seen by a doctor as soon as possible.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutthenhs.blogspot.com

contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
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