International healthcare empire?
Maybe there is a reason why the govt wants to ban all consultations on healthcare reconfiguration proposals other than those with a substantial impact. They wouldn’t then have to deal with pesky pensioners making trouble, when after all the DoH know best. (I did not say that it was a good reason, pay attention!)
Pensioners led by Donald Giddings, a 78-year-old heart patient, are challenging the way in which the decision to downgrade health services in the Hertfordshire town of Hemel Hempstead was made.
This week, the High Court in London set a date for a judicial review that will examine claims by the Dacorum Hospital Action Group that the views of the public were “misrepresented” during the consultation over the proposed changes.
The group, represented by Matrix, the law chambers of which Cherie Booth, the Prime Minister’s wife, is a member, claim that their views were ignored during a consultation led by John Underwood, a former Labour spin doctor hired by West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust last July.
The consultation failed to ask them about plans to close Hemel Hempstead General Hospital’s accident and emergency department, which had already been discussed alongside plans to build a large hospital elsewhere in the county.
None the less, thousands of members of the public told the trust that they did not want to lose their casualty department. However, when health chiefs admitted last November that they could not afford to build the new hospital, they said that Hemel Hempstead would still be stripped of most of its services.
“Cooked” surveys & consultation exercises which aim to produce a report supporting policy goals desired by those in charge can easily be recognised and are not worth much. Accusations of politically driven policy are already being thrown around.
I will admit that I am teetotal & therefore can be accused of wanting to force my opinions on people who are merely enjoying themselves by supporting a ban on the advertising of alcopops. If Patricia Hewitt does really go ahead with this, I will count it as one of her more sensible interventions. ‘Why do I feel this way?’, you are entitled to ask. Years of exposure to completely wasted teens & pre-teens during my time in A&E along with a feeling of horror that the harm done to thousands of babies is not being recognised. The Telegraph highlights the dangers of foetal alcohol syndrome.
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is the umbrella term for a range of disorders caused by a mother drinking alcohol while pregnant.
With 750,000 live births each year in this country, it is a condition that affects 7,500 children annually - more than the combined number of babies born with muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, HIV and Down’s syndrome.
A recent study indicated that 61 per cent of women don’t cut down at all, and a survey carried out by St George’s hospital in London revealed that just under 50 per cent of mothers visiting the teenage antenatal clinic drank more than four units on a single occasion and 27 per cent admitted to at times “getting drunk”.
In Britain, teenage drinking is much more widespread among girls than boys, with almost 30 per cent of under 20-year-olds confessing to drinking to excess at least three times a month.
And as for smoking, I won’t be shedding too many tears about this either.
The sale of packs of 10 cigarettes - attractive to teenagers because they are cheaper - would be banned and cigarettes kept out of sight in shops.
The proposals, contained in a report from the British Medical Association, also include plans to compel retailers to obtain licences to sell tobacco, to outlaw tobacco vending machines and impose regular and above-inflation price increases to try to cut demand.
Accusations of supporting the nanny state bother me not a tad.
And this intervention sounds like it has the right combination of solid theory & practical implementation to make it work. I await details of the MEND programme with interest.
Time and motion studies make a comeback
The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, a Government agency set up to improve efficiency asked staff at four hospitals to track the amount of time their colleagues spent on different tasks. Particular problems, such as the way mealtimes were organised, were videoed so that staff could suggest ways to speed it up.
A reasonable method as long as not taken to extremes.
Nurses spend less than four hours in 10 treating patients, because of the demands of paperwork and poor hospital layout. They spend a quarter of their time hunting for equipment and drugs or, because of poor design, walking around the ward. Almost as much time was lost to paperwork and handovers between staff changing shifts.
The findings come as a separate survey of 1,300 nurses by Nursing Times revealed that nine out of 10 blamed a lack of time for poor patient care. Almost half had to leave the wards “unacceptably” often, in order to pick up missing equipment or supplies, while more than 40 per cent said they had to take on portering duties too often. Three quarters described themselves as frustrated.
Plenty of us can sympathise.
Liz Ward, a nurse manager at Barnsley Hospital in South Yorkshire, one of the hospitals involved, said that the study showed that technology distanced staff from patients, with records held on computers at hubs, rather than on paper by the beds. Her ward is piloting a return to the traditional system.
“A paper system by the bed means the nurse is actually with the patient when she is taking the notes,” she said.
I wonder how much notice is going to be taken of this example!
The Independent (which is becoming more of a tabloid with its idiotic crusade about mobile phones & Wi-Fi) covers the problems caused by the increasing problem with obesity.
Unison warns on the eve of its conference in Brighton that other healthcare professionals might go on strike unless an improved pay offer is made.
Unison national officer Karen Jennings outlined this stance before the start of its health workers conference.
“I think a strike is certain if we can’t get the government to come back to the table and talk”, she said.
“Our members are extremely angry and this is going to be very, very clear from conference when we leave it - what course of action we’ll be taking and this will be on the back of a range of other health organisations who are also very, very angry.”
Hilary Benn has been heckled at the conference for parroting New Labour talking points.
After speaking at the conference about the role of unions and the government in helping people in poorer countries, Mr Benn took questions from delegates.
One asked: “Why doesn’t the government continue to provide an example to the rest of the world on how to deliver health care and keep the NHS going, rather than going down the road of following the American method of putting greed before need?“
Mr Benn responded saying the NHS had 85,000 more nurses in the past decade, adding there would also be a 10% increase in the funding available to the NHS.
A fact that this correspondent to the Telegraph’s letters pages illustrates:
Sir - On my way back to the ward today from life-support training, given by a disgruntled paramedic, I bumped into a tearful pharmacist whose pay had just been slashed by “Agenda for Change”.
Then, on passing the doctors’ mess, I waved to two of my colleagues who are leaving medicine before being forced into unemployment, and entered the ward only to interrupt the nursing handover, where industrial action and ward closures were being discussed angrily.
Luckily, I didn’t meet any jobless physiotherapists or overworked midwives en route or I might have become rather depressed myself.
Well done, Patricia Hewitt; as the Secretary of State for Health, you have successfully managed to destroy any staff morale left in the NHS across almost every specialty. Do you really think it will be long before patient care suffers?
Dr Graham Robertson, Glasgow
An intriguing mention in the Guardian of the proposed launch of an insurance policy from WPA guaranteeing the availability of chemotherapy if diagnosed with cancer.
The policy gives access to the most modern and expensive cancer drugs for less than £100 a year. Patients covered by a WPA policy would be treated on the NHS, but the cost of the drugs prescribed would be underwritten.
Speaking of cancer, the Scottish Cervical Call-Recall System (SCCRS) is back in trouble. The earlier concerns were to do with security but it appears that the IT teams north of the border have not learnt from the difficulties CfH has faced. The Herald & the Scotsman cover it prominently.
A new computerised cancer screening system planned for Scotland is unreliable and “dangerous to patient care“, according to GPs.
Doctors are calling for the cervical cancer screening system, which is due to be launched in Scotland on May 28, to be delayed so technical issues can be ironed out.
Hundreds of staff members have taken a two-hour training course to learn how to use the software for the system, but they say there are issues with the equipment and no way to revert to the paper system if the software fails.
The NHS National Services in Scotland, however, insisted the software is “state of the art”, and that, in the event of isolated IT problems, surgeries could revert to the paper system.
GP Jim O’Neil, a member of Glasgow medical committee, said: “We do not have a problem with a national call and recall system, which is a great idea. Our concern is with the additional things they insist happen that are not friendly to the way practices work and we think are probably dangerous to patient care.”
A delay is a lot more palatable than an embarassing failure I would have thought. Or is listening to critical users a sign of weakness?
And finally, an interesting strategy seems to be behind the Terra Firma / Wellcome Trust bid for Boots. The Telegraph & the Times each have a different take on it with some mild spinning against the bid in the Guardian.
Guy Hands is trying to build an international healthcare empire that would combine BUPA’s hospitals with chemist chain Alliance Boots under an umbrella brand of “Wellness”.
Terra Firm is plotting a joint bid with Macquarie for BUPA’s 26 hospitals and is due to meet Alliance Boots’ management on Tuesday morning to discuss its indicative £11.26p a share for the retailer.
If successful Hands would merge the two businesses in a move that would see him shift Alliance Boots’ focus away from pharmaceutical wholesaling and on to NHS support services and other personal healthcare initiatives.
Sources say Terra Firma and its co-bidder for Alliance Boots medical charity the Wellcome Trust see massive strategic potential in the local pharmacies, following a pilot National Health Service initiative to tender out the running of GP surgeries to private companies.
Meanwhile KKR’s strategy has emerged as wholly different. It is thought the US private equity house plans to make a raft of large acquisitions of wholesale companies around the world. It has already identified two major wholesalers in South America and has its eye on dozens of others around the world.
It is also considering moving into the healthcare insurance market, through a tie-up with a company such as Pru Health.
Terra Firma faces several handicaps in trying to buy Alliance Boots. The healthcare group has agreed to pay an 11p-a-share “break fee†if the board withdraws its support for the £10.6 billion offer already made by the private-equity firm KKR.
And Alliance Boots has agreed that KKR will be given the details of any new bid from a rival if it considers switching its support to the newcomer. In effect, KKR will then have the option to top any competing offer.