Access
Access to endoscopy:
A few snippets in the news today with endoscopy waiting times bemoaned by the Healthcare Commission leading to a mention in the Times as well as detailed coverage in the BBC.
The survey found that half of patients in south-east England were waiting more than six months, compared with 0.2% of patients in the north east. In December last year, when the survey was carried out, a third of patients were waiting longer than that for colonoscopies or sigmoidoscopies and a fifth for gastroscopies.
What I can say is the waiting list for colonoscopies is so long, it was not worth referring patients unless as emergencies.
How ever these are not procedures that can be performed in facilities without full back-up & the way to improve the service is to expand the NHS provision, not to set-up IS treatment centres that cannot deal with these investigations & instead take away more minor procedures, destroying training as well as the financial balance of service provision.
Access to dental care:
NHS dentistry or rather the lack of it again comes in for some stick with the Which survey of dental access claiming a postal lottery for its provision.
Access to maternity care:
The BBC is late to the party with the obstetric care provision story, covering the cuts to ante-natal care.
The NCT, which provides paid-for ante-natal classes for women, started to compile reports from members about local cuts last October.
So far it has been told 19 areas across England and Wales have either cut or closed ante-natal classes or visits to maternity units - designed to help expectant parents become familiar with the surroundings in which they will have their baby.
And as for this story about EU migrants overwhelming the NHS provision of obstetric care, there has been enough demonisation of asylum seekers & other immigrants over the past few years. They are part of the same common market that lets British pensioners get their knees replaced early in France or British holidaymakers seek treatment in the rest of Europe. Deal with it. Besides, anyone with the name Furedi deserves closer scrutiny for political motives.
Or just plain access to the hospital:
Max Pemberton in the Telegraph has his own take on parking charges:
In the Nineties, the link between the allocation of funding and the meeting of local residents’ health needs was broken as block funding was abandoned and, in its place, hospitals were established as financially independent corporations that were expected to generate money in order to break even.
What happened? Trusts sold off land, cut back on staff and contracted out services as a way of producing revenue.
It is this need to develop income-generating schemes that is behind the contracting-out of car parking, as well as the privately owned restaurants, newsagents and coffee shops that now litter hospital lobbies.
The companies that manage these facilities, eager to increase their profit margins, can charge premium rates because they know they have a captive market. They are mercenaries not bound by the founding principles of the NHS - and the Trusts are happy to collude with them because of the income they generate.
The letters column of the Telegraph has a few more medics writing in.
And finally the sale of Mercury Health by Tribal to Care UK for £77 million, a profit of £27 million gets the nod. From the FT:
At present, sales from the clinical care unit of Capio, at £18.3m, only represent 9 per cent of turnover. But the division, which was formed in 2004 to provide primary and secondary healthcare facilities, is the fastest expanding. Industry watchers believe that the combination of new contract wins and the addition of Mercury Health could take revenues from the division to more than £200m by 2010.
According to people close to the situation, the purchase will be funded by a mixture of debt and equity. There is expected to be a placing of 5m shares with institutions, worth about £33.7m based on last Friday’s closing price.
Care UK edged out Cognetas, the private equity group that is understood to be working with Mercury’s management team to do a buy-out, and Inhealth, a privately owned healthcare service group, to acquire Mercury Health.
For the year to March 31 2006, Mercury made revenues of £14.6m (£349,000) and operating profits of £1.5m (loss of £345,000).
The sale will allow Tribal to refocus on its core support services business and pay down debt. It is expected to receive net cash of £52m from the sale.