NHS meeting at No 10, will the experts come up with any solution ??

[Zetter]

Reading up on the American system there is no way anyone sane is going to vote for that its the ultimate expression of im alright jack and stuff everyone else. Ok if you have a decent job and insurance but loads of people are going to fall through the cracks who are working minimum wage and are one serious illness away from being bankrupted for their entire life. 

A lot of Europe seems to do it better than us with some level of fixed fee paying for their treatment but mainly free at the point of delivery (i.e if you are in a bad accident they are after your credit card before you get in the ambulance as in the USA). 

I think the NHS needs to look at

1) Paying a set amount for visits to the doctors even say £10 would make a difference.

2) Cutting back on what is delivered for free on the NHS some stuff is tbh going to have to get cut its not nice but its going to have to.

3) As has been suggested above pay staff a decent wage for their skills but renegotiate on things like Pensions and sick leave to bring it into line with whats affordable to cut costs.

 

[Vince Green]

27 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

When senior managers say they can't manage they are incompetent. It should be taken as an admission of failure not used as an excuse

A small story from about two years ago when my late mother was in hospital.

This one morning a doctor came round to see her and told her that she could go home now. So she phoned me to come up and get her. That was a wasted journey. It took 24 hours for her discharge papers to be signed and a letter written to her GP. Then we had to wait nearly another day for her 'meds' to take home with her. The meds in question were simple antibiotics that they could have given me a prescription to drop in to our local chemist on the way home.

This is fundamental inefficiency of the most basic kind. If every patient's discharge is delayed by two days across the whole country  ??

[Agriv8]

No it will keep limping on too many big companies taking cream off the top and paying to keep politicians in there pocket !

Agriv8 

[Westward]

30 minutes ago, Agriv8 said:

No it will keep limping on too many big companies taking cream off the top and paying to keep politicians in there pocket !

Agriv8 

For example???

[Vince Green]

1 hour ago, Zetter said:

 

3) As has been suggested above pay staff a decent wage for their skills but renegotiate on things like Pensions and sick leave to bring it into line with whats affordable to cut costs.

 

You have to separate staff basic rates of pay from their actual take home pay which is far higher but it doesn't suit their agenda to mention that.

[old man]

3 hours ago, Westward said:

Aneurin Bevan, always ready to take the credit, merely implemented the parts of the Beveridge Report which related to health. Since Labour continually claim to have invented the NHS it might be worth noting that Beveridge was actually a liberal and the report was commissioned by the coalition government under instructions from Churchill. Beveridge having been Churchill's private secretary early in the 20th century.

From it's earliest beginnings, pre WWI, the welfare state was always a liberal concept. This was when the liberals were actually a sensible and electable party and long before they became "Labour Lite". Just about all the Labour Party has ever done for the NHS over the last 70 years is to complain that the conservatives starve it of cash.

The NHS needs to be free of government interference and the government needs to be freed from being held responsible for the structural shortcomings in the NHS. Neither of which will happen whilst it remains untouchable.

Maybe need the Mohning one and Kwarteng in charge?

[old man]

1 hour ago, Westward said:

For example???

Richard Branson (Virgin) in Burton upon Trent supposedly?

 

[Agriv8]

5 hours ago, Agriv8 said:

No it will keep limping on too many big companies taking cream off the top and paying to keep politicians in there pocket !

4 hours ago, Westward said:

For example???

Nearly 1/2 a billion 

NHS breaks up £400mn data contract in response to privacy concerns

contracts to patch together hospitals that should have been closed years ago!

Nuffield health income nearly 1 billion in 2019 l! Because people can’t wait for there nhs operation!

That spring to mind

Agriv8

 

[Westward]

16 hours ago, Agriv8 said:

Nuffield health income nearly 1 billion in 2019 l! Because people can’t wait for there nhs operation!

 

Nuffield is a charity. Surely they help the NHS rather than plunder it.

[oldypigeonpopper]

23 minutes ago, Westward said:

Nuffield is a charity. Surely they help the NHS rather than plunder it.

Have you looked to see what the Nuffield charity pay the CEO ?

[Sussexboy]

4 hours ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Have you looked to see what the Nuffield charity pay the CEO ?

Indeed, £1.2 million is a big salary. But he did take a £400K pay cut the previous year, “only” trousering £580K. The big conundrum for organisations like this is what do you pay the CEO of a £1 billion company? Whether it is a traditional company or a non profit, it still needs the same level of management to run successfully. Then you have to balance that against public perception that a charity should not be paying large salaries. There is a strong argument for a well paid professional executive management to keep such a large company on the right course. With those big bucks come big responsibility, big hassle and big accountability. Now I have retired you could not pay me enough to take on something like that!

[Westward]

4 hours ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Have you looked to see what the Nuffield charity pay the CEO ?

No but I am aware of that too many charity CEOs get eye wateringly large salaries. Cancer research, which is really a promotional vehicle for the the pharma industry and is a charity in name only, pay their CEO £240K.

[Vince Green]

The NHS's two biggest dead expenditures allegedly are pensions and paying off the PFI debt (which will never go away.)

 

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, freeing up hospital beds by getting patients into a care home to be looked after until able to take care themselves or with help of family looks good but will the £100 million go very far with the care home costs, estimated 3000 plus patients , I suppose in the grand scheme of this it's seems a practical solution, 

[oowee]

On 08/01/2023 at 14:43, Vince Green said:

You have to separate staff basic rates of pay from their actual take home pay which is far higher but it doesn't suit their agenda to mention that.

Why? Surely what matters is the pay rate for the skill set. The fact that someone works overtime or is in receipt of a shift allowance is a seperate matter. My daughter as a GP has to work out of hours for which she recieves extra pay but this reflects the unsocial hours. The pay is simply unrealistic for the job. 

I accept that there are many areas for improvement and they should be dealt with but this is not the fault of the staff. We should start by looking at what is provided against what is funded and match one to the other. The bulging ageing population makes the current system unsustainable. 

[Vince Green]

19 minutes ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Hello, freeing up hospital beds by getting patients into a care home to be looked after until able to take care themselves or with help of family looks good but will the £100 million go very far with the care home costs, estimated 3000 plus patients , I suppose in the grand scheme of this it's seems a practical solution, 

Yes but many of the delays in discharging patients are just ridiculous work creation schemes by occupational health busy bodies.

Customer of mine, a 40 year old keen cyclist broke his leg in an accident. He wasn't allowed to be sent home until his house had been 'inspected' to assess whether it was safe for him 

[Rewulf]

24 minutes ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Hello, freeing up hospital beds by getting patients into a care home to be looked after until able to take care themselves or with help of family looks good but will the £100 million go very far with the care home costs, estimated 3000 plus patients , I suppose in the grand scheme of this it's seems a practical solution, 

A friend of mine has a couple of care homes, he charges between £1200 and £2000 a week , depending on level of care.

Thats nearly as much as it costs to house an asylum seeker illegal immigrant refugee fleeing war and pestilence in France , and thats a more important mission for the government, isnt it ? 

1 minute ago, oowee said:

The pay is simply unrealistic for the job. 

The average gp salary in the United Kingdom is £70,912 per year or £36.36 per hour. Entry level positions start at £35,110 per year while most experienced workers make up to £95,000 per year.

[Vince Green]

11 minutes ago, oowee said:

Why? Surely what matters is the pay rate for the skill set. The fact that someone works overtime or is in receipt of a shift allowance is a seperate matter. My daughter as a GP has to work out of hours for which she recieves extra pay but this reflects the unsocial hours. The pay is simply unrealistic for the job. 

I accept that there are many areas for improvement and they should be dealt with but this is not the fault of the staff. We should start by looking at what is provided against what is funded and match one to the other. The bulging ageing population makes the current system unsustainable. 

British nurses are the second highest paid nurses in Europe, second only to Denmark according to the salary comparison websites.  They only just fail by a small amount to be the highest paid in Europe.

In the past two years British nurses have received two pay increases, both above the (then) rate of inflation. Then they say they want a 19% pay increase claiming to be hard done by.

It's politically motivated, part of the weaponisation of the NHS

[ditchman]

1 hour ago, oldypigeonpopper said:

Hello, freeing up hospital beds by getting patients into a care home to be looked after until able to take care themselves or with help of family looks good but will the £100 million go very far with the care home costs, estimated 3000 plus patients , I suppose in the grand scheme of this it's seems a practical solution, 

"many" years ago....there were many nursing homes...and were staffed by nurses and visiting locums and doctors...caring for folk that had medicle needs......the govt' at the time then decided to make savings and withdrew funding for qualified medicle staff....so the homes then became "care" homes...they were allowed to treat clients up to a certain extent ...after that ....they had no alternative other than to forward patients to hostpital..................and that is where we are today.. 

[1Ab]

Having lived in a country with no real public healthcare and seen how financially devastating it is when things go wrong. 

I would not mind paying for the small stuff like doctors visits, X rays, minor procedures etc. As long as the NHS is there for the big stuff. 

While still living in a country with no public healthcare my dad needed a kidney transplant and it cleared out all his savings, pension, and medical insurance. And there was financial help from family members.

[JohnfromUK]

1 hour ago, Vince Green said:

It's politically motivated, part of the weaponisation of the NHS

Many people are now 'having to' go private for non life threatening operations, notably orthopaedics like hip and knee replacements.  They are told that either they go on a waiting list for the NHS for potentially years, during which time they will be in pain with limited mobility and the long term effects will include possibly serious loss of fitness permanently and as a result reduced life expectancy.  All caused by lack of beds, operating theatres, Drs and nurses.

However - get out your cheque book and you can have the operation in a couple of weeks.  Same Dr, often same nurses (contract to both NHS and private) and sometimes even same hospital (NHS places in private hospital and private operations/wards in NHS facilities).

Keeping the waiting lists long enough to persuade people to go privately is a nice little earner for staff and 'system'.  Work for NHS a few days a week and private a few days a week keeps staff short in NHS so that they can earn more on their private days.  Keeping waiting lists long also keeps up the pressure on the Govt for pay rises and more money for the bottomless pit.

There is a lot of politics in it.

[Yellow Bear]

2 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

There is a lot of politics in it

It would not be wrong to say that ALL current strikes are politically motivated by the labour party's main paymasters.

[Newbie to this]

5 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

It would not be wrong to say that ALL current strikes are politically motivated by the labour party's main paymasters.

[oowee]

2 hours ago, Rewulf said:

The average gp salary in the United Kingdom is £70,912 per year or £36.36 per hour. Entry level positions start at £35,110 per year while most experienced workers make up to £95,000 per year.

Peanuts for the skill levels and training. Dog walker in the village on £36 an hour. Electrician on £60 an hour. 

[Charliedog]

42 minutes ago, oowee said:

Peanuts for the skill levels and training. Dog walker in the village on £36 an hour. Electrician on £60 an hour. 

last time i went to see a GP I put my symptoms into google first to see what it came up with and advised to see a GP, low and behold the GP did exactly the same thing (strange rash)