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£20 Billion for the NHS

Some UK business enterprises will go under because they they are shackled to pension schemes that they cannot afford to properly fund. In other words they are really pension funds that are shackled to a business enterprise. The UK is really a country shackled to a health service that it cannot properly fund - as a matter of interest a large wad of the £20 billion found down the back of the sofa will help plug a hole in the NHS pension fund.

I, unfortunately, have to use the NHS fairly regularly and no way is it perfect. MY local GP practice displays a notice of last months appointments that patients didn't turn up for. I talked about this with one of the doctors and he said he would like to fine them of maybe refuse to have them as patients but they are not allowed to.

Yes there appears to be far too managers but very few leaders
 
Maybe a nationalised pharmaceutical company might help. It's not just the cost of drugs it's every single disposable item, gloves, sterile wipes etc.

To be fair to this thread though most of the issues highlighted contribute to the problem. There is no single problem causing rising costs or inefficiency. There's many and many ways to address the many issues. We all see some of them often and some of then sometimes.

Eg Why prescribe nicotine replacement products when a smoker can buy them and still save money? Why prescribe vitamins etc when they can be bought for less than the cost of a prescription?
Why employ nurses on a nurses contract to do admin work in outpatients clinics
?

The bits I've put in italics are actually precisely the sorts of behaviours you get from a nationalised enterprise. Nationalising something just reinforces those sorts of behaviours, as there's no incentive to change. Part of the issue is that the organisation is so huge - 1.5 million people if you believe this - and is the fourth or fifth largest employer in the world. That's something like 5% of the working population of the country. Trying to manage that beast and more precisely the amount of money it absorbs is non-trivial and also why the much-derided NHS managing class are required. Contrary to popular belief, budgets of that magnitude don't manage themselves and will not be solved by employing Matrons and having the doctors do the finances.

You could argue that devolving budgets to a local and more controllable level and letting them get on with it might be a more efficient approach, but the counter arguments include potential for post-code lotteries, national pay-bargaining and bulk purchasing power. However, post-code lotteries and inefficient buying are all hallmarks of the current system.

We simply can't keep throwing money at something that currently absorbs 30% of all public spending (up from 11% or so in the 50s).
 
So the NHS is going to get £20billion in extra funding which is a brilliant thing, however how many of the senior NHS "Administrators" will see this as an excuse to ramp their pay up and deny front line services needed funds. Call me a sceptical old bastard, but the NHS pisses so much money away and pays stupid wages to people who lets be frank could organise an alcohol binge in a brewery.
How much money is lost persecuting staff who make claims about misconduct, bullying, neglect? How many staff leave, thereby requiring replacements, due to a corrosive culture within management? How much is wasted when elderly and infirm cannot be placed in more appropriate accommodation within the social-care system and have to remain in hospital? The sector could do more to understand human- and organisational-factors issues, but won't, because that means changing the culture at the top of the Trusts. The NHS is fragmented, with few national standards set by Central Government.
 
I work for the NHS, and I'm sick of hearing about how hard it is for nurses. Try being a Paramedic especially one who works in hospitals as well.

Mean while of course, most in the NHS have voted in favour of this spectacular (non) pay rise, without consideration for the fact that it will effect unsocial hour payments....and guess which particular profession relies on that? Yep, Paras (and A&E ambo workers)....but that's OK. As long as the nurses are being given a non pay rise.

As for money that will come back from the EU, the NHS gets enough it's just very badly managed. I'd rather it goes to defence, with a refunding of recruiting, accommodation and grub and also something like Home Defence Force, and of course, veterans. And here's an idea...veterans should be included in the garaunteed interview scheme for the emergency services, so if you're a vet or still serving, you will by right, be interviewed. That way, it will remove the disparity that leads to service personnel being paper-sieved by say, the NHS or Police, because they've been serving in HMF.

This new money, if it ever actually appears, will enable that to happen.

What possible reason is there to provide extra money for veterans?

Did a job, got paid - move on with your life.
 
My sister who is a senior nurse (can't remember the rank...SRN?) in critical care has the same opinion regarding funding. She doesn't care how many billions are pumped in, it will never be enough because so much is wasted.
In her opinion the NHS needs to be restructured at every level, but that just won't happen sadly.

I too work am employed by the NHS, I am one of the managers people on here want sacked, the bulk of my job is to ensure the hospital is clean, a really difficult job when the cleaners are contractors, much easier with "in-house" Domestics, there are £k's wasted with contractors doing various work which could be up to 33% cheaper in-house, its highly frustrating and extremely wasteful as they have their own supervisory and management teams.
Now to the point of this post:
The trust I am employed by has recently had to recruit 2 new HR managers to ensure "gender equality" in pay, these new managers will be on about £35k each for this non-job but its a compulsory role in the right-on NHS. The NHS pays by band, the job is weighted and the band set, it doesn't matter what gender you are if you're doing the job you get the band set for it, therefore no gender inequality in pay and no need for these two managers which could have saved £70k for patient care..
 
I think I got the point

You don’t want foreigners using our NHS
But if they live here and contribute in the same way as other residents then that’s why we all pay our taxes to get free care for all - free but with particular parts that get paid for

i remember watching a TV prog about an A&E near Heathrow. One of the nurses said ambulances are often called to meet planes and take sick passengers to A&E. These patients were often in no fit state to travel or heavenly pregnant women. Nearly all came from Africa or India/ Pakistan. It aint rocket science it just needs a bit of joined up thinking, some decisive leadership and less social worker type mangers.
 
i remember watching a TV prog about an A&E near Heathrow. One of the nurses said ambulances are often called to meet planes and take sick passengers to A&E. These patients were often in no fit state to travel or heavenly pregnant women. Nearly all came from Africa or India/ Pakistan. It aint rocket science it just needs a bit of joined up thinking, some decisive leadership and less social worker type mangers.

Can you link to that please? Particularly the bit where the nationalities of these people were discussed in detail, and the details of the heavily pregnant women that had flown here long-haul
 
The oldies have a right to feel aggrieved; their lifetime tax contributions should have been accrued, invested and held in trust for them - in which case there'd be no care funding crisis now. If the oldies had had the opportunity or been compelled to put the same tax contributions into a private care insurance scheme, they'd now be well taken care of. Instead, government has just pished everything away and has to look for scapegoats.

What really beggars belief in the whole NHS funding crisis is that there isn't even the most basic of budgetary calculations involved. Simply put, the NHS is a limitless liability cost, and it costs a lot per head of population - but the government doesn't even know (or won't reveal) how many people it is servicing. Just what is the UK population today - 63 million, or more like 83 million?
I fear the elderly will continue to be the scapegoats for madcap ideologies, for thieves, and mismanagement, also for prevalent wastage and profiteering. Moralities and responsibility have changed.

In quasi-banana-republic buffoon states, lunatics write-off millions wasted on some corrupt cause celebre " because that's different', and billions in cash and assets pished away by government. At the same time they begrudge health care and compassion to 'useless eaters '. Never trust a grinning spiv trying to be reasonable. Lucky we're not like that in this country eh.

On your reference to Government: it doesn't govern and never knows how. The old and bold might expect better leadership and accountability; they're old enough to know better. Newspapers are full of bad news for and about the NHS which by the way, as good as its workers are, always seemed to be a god awful mess as well as skint.
 
I fear tis latest bit of desperate knee-jerk populism by Mrs May will blow back in her face. First of all there is the misrepresentation (downright lie) that the Boris bus said EU savings money WOULD go to the NHS. It only said COULD. Then it immediately became clear that topping this sum was going to take ALL the possible savings PLUS more borrowing PLUS MORE TAX. It is now being made clear by the Chancellor that this will take every groat found down the Government's sofa so there will be NO more money for Defence, nor for policing - this in the face of the most arming rise in violent lawlessness, and the police that we do have telling burglars, let alone shoplifters, to get on with it as their crimes won't be investigated at all.

As per @bill121koln's very informative post above, what the NHS does need is a complete overhaul of its management structure.

The other thing that needs fixing is that elderly bed-blockers are central Govt responsibility in the NHS but it is a Local task to find the alternative (nursing home etc). Local authorities have a built in incentive to stall on this. I had personal experience of this (would take too long to explain) with my late mother (leaving out of account the way the NHS dropped her out of a cradle thing used to lift her and then spent six weeks avoiding finding out that they had broken her wrist).
 
Can you link to that please? Particularly the bit where the nationalities of these people were discussed in detail, and the details of the heavily pregnant women that had flown here long-haul

Ah the Lagos Shuttle.

Health tourism warning as NHS chases £350,000 bill from Nigerian woman who gave birth in a British hospital

Meanwhile, the £20Bn funding seems....elusive...


Treasury X Factor: Tory MPs belatedly summoned to find the money for NHS pledge | Coffee House
 
That link doesn’t mention anything about people being brought straight from aircraft in ambulances because they had boarded planes whilst heavily pregnant

Oh it happens and not just with pregnancy.

If you consider that the cost of an airline ticket pales into insignificance compared to the cost of treating complex conditions, not surprising that a thriving industry sprang up in some developing countries to facilitate just such abuses.

But don't take my word for it:

"One letter from a junior hospital doctor, working at a hospital close to Heathrow Airport, read as follows: ‘Every single week, I see people who have flown in from all over the world, with a variety of extremely serious health problems. Many of these people had to be wheelchaired onto the plane because they were too unwell to walk on board. I understand the temptation to come to Britain but we often have our ITU full of patients without NHS numbers who are there for weeks or months with no means or intention to pay, which impacts on our resources.’"

https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1308/rcsbull.2017.176
 
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