Foot, meet mouth.
Patricia Hewitt seems to have this problem of making statements with little knowledge or understanding. I look forward to her backing up her claims.
NHS dentistry stays in the limelight with an in-depth examination in the Independent.
Tony Blair pledged at the Labour Party conference in 1999 that everyone would have access to an NHS dentist. Last week, more than seven years later, the Department of Health slipped out figures showing that 55.7 per cent of adults and 70.5 per cent children had been seen by an NHS dentist in the previous 24 months. Yesterday, a report from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux revealed that 77 per cent of the 4,000 respondents to their survey said they could not find an NHS dentist prepared to accept them. There is still a very long way to go to meet Tony Blair’s pledge.
Ms Winterton told the Today programme on Radio 4 that it was “unfair” for some dentists to seek extra cash at the expense of others who planned their work better.
She defended the system after being told of a practice in Fulham, south west London, which had been forced to put seven of its eight dentists “on holiday” despite demand.
Over 85% of dentists feel that access has worsened since the new contract was implemented.
Susie Sanderson, chair of the BDA’s executive board, said: “When the Government is failing to meet even its own success criteria for the new contract, then it’s time for urgent action.
“We now have a reductive, target-driven system that is failing both patients and dentists.
Rosie Winterton, the health minister, said: “The overall picture is that, despite the speculation, the number of dentists is growing and rather than leaving they are actually keen to expand their work for the NHS - hardly indicative of a failing system.â€
Not in most observers eyes, it isn’t.
One in ten teens faces addiction! I will let you think about that headline for a while.
As for this, sorry, no one is cheering. Services have been decimated across the board & returning the money now is not going to bring them back.
The National Health Service is to get a minimum of 3 per cent real-terms growth a year between 2008 and 2011, Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary has said.
Following last week’s Budget, and the chancellor’s settlement for education in the comprehensive spending review, Ms Hewitt told the Financial Times that the NHS “will continue to grow, and grow faster than the rate of economic growth -generally”.
Asked if that meant a minimum of 3 per cent, given Treasury forecasts that the economy will grow at 2.75 per, she said in an interview: “That is your deduction, but I am not dissenting from it.”
The figure of 3 per cent is below the 4.4 per cent that the 2002 Wanless review suggested was the minimum the NHS was likely to need after 2008.
The service will head towards reducing the total maximum wait for treatment to 18 weeks, and that “will not be an old, top-down, performance-management target”, but would be achieved by staff themselves reshaping the way services were provided.
The “staff” want to improve services. The last few years have been all about hobbling their ability to do so with increasing layers of management.
Hospital readmissions are on the rise,
prompting claims ministers are pressuring the NHS to release patients early to help cut waiting times. Government figures, obtained by the Conservatives, showed that the number of emergency readmissions had risen by nearly a third since 2002.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said hospitals were discharging people too early because of NHS targets.
The government said readmissions were often unrelated to the earlier visit.
In the last quarter of 2002-3, 5.5% of patients were readmitted as emergency cases less than a month after being released.
By the last quarter of 2005-6, this had risen to 7.1%.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “The decision to discharge patients is made by clinicians.
I am sure that there will be plenty of clinicians available to test that statement.
As this perennial complaint shows
An NHS Alliance poll of 651 GPs found 70% often received papers late and many said the forms were not complete, compromising safety.
It was things like these that the Electronic Patient Record was supposed to fix, simple solutions using existing technology.
Among information which was reported to be missing were the patient’s name, contact details, medication and treatment.
Incorrect or insufficient data on medication, such as potentially toxic drugs like warfarin, has even led to patients being readmitted to hospital because of complications such as internal bleeding and strokes.
In one instance, a discharge summary was received but failed to mention that the patient had just spent a week in intensive care following a stroke and heart attack.
Some 58% of GPs reported the problems meant clinical care was compromised in the last year, with 39% claiming it had put patients at risk.
Overworked staff with no time to even document what treatment they have provided sounds familiar all right.
Speaking of IT systems,
Professor Michael Thick, clinical officer of Connecting for Health said that interoperability was an issue which would be high on the computing agenda for a while, citing the two main systems suppliers in the National Programme for IT as an example of the problems being faced.
“The standards of Cerner and iSoft are based on different structures which are not necessarily compatible at the moment and given that we have not been able to agree on a consensus on coding, interoperability is something we are hoping for but will not necessarily happen.â€
Which makes this rather more important than is generally realised.
Connecting for Health has today issued its tender for bids to join the catalogue of ‘additional systems suppliers’.
The tender in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) for an ‘Additional Supply Capability and Capacity (ASCC) Framework Agreement’ is open to a maximum of 500 suppliers, for a period of up to four years. The estimated value of the tender is £100m.
The Guardian seems to think that IBA Health is not making much headway at winning over CSC in its efforts for control of Isoft.