1bn wasted in NHS
A new survey says that nurses are wasting £ 1 bn a year searching for missing equipment, 35% faced daily shortages of medical supplies and 25% thought that patient records and lab results went missing every day. Patient Care The waste is bad enough but what about patient care? The survey continues “one in four [...]
Learning by shutting up
The possible political angle of the story of Clara Stokes receiving ‘inhumane’ treatment in a Luton hospital, according to her family, is not the reason for this post. Rather I am interested in the spokesman’s response at the bottom of the article. The family say that Clara was abandoned for hours at a time, left [...]
Anti-NHS targets platform for independent
Gary Walker is standing against health minister Gillian Merron in the marginal seat of Lincoln. As reported in the Sunday Telegraph, the ex-chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, says that targets are “killing patients and destroying the NHS” Mr Walker was dismissed over allegations of using bad language, but he says it was because [...]
Openness is the new constraint
We live in a closed world. Even though they deal with tax payers money, government contracts are shielded by ‘commercial confidentiality’, we only get to hear about MPs expenses when they are leaked to a newspaper, Apple won’t let applications it doesn’t fancy onto its iPhone or iPad, scientists and commentators like Simon Singh are [...]
Better service before NHS cuts
If it is true that cuts are being made to frontline NHS services then they are getting it in the wrong order. With proper method better service and care can be provided and savings made in a matter of a few months without cutting service. There is plenty of waste in the NHS such that [...]
Ambulance response times in Yorkshire
The GMB union have issued a press release in which they asked the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) to provide more staff and vehicles to enable them to hit the 8 minute target for attendance at category A calls (which are “immediately life threatening”). The target is that 75% of these calls are responded to in [...]
NHS cost cutting and care
The BMJ recently published four articles to answer the question Can the NHS cut costs without substantially damaging the quality of health care? The articles: No by John Appleby, chief economist, King’s Fund No by James Owen Drife, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, Leeds General Infirmary Yes by Paul Corrigan, management consultant and former director [...]
Waste from policy or systems?
The Telegraph reports that a patient has been blocked from an operation after paying to see a consultant. The patient said: she only paid for the private consultation at Airedale Hospital because she faced a six-month wait to see the specialist So is this a problem with the policy of not allowing top-up payments or [...]
Worst call centre in Britain?
I don’t know the call centre described in this Guardian blog is the worst call centre in Britain, but I would say that it ranks pretty badly. The trouble is most of the other call centres I have had experience of are not much better. The problem stems from three things: Treating call centres as [...]
Have targets improved the NHS?
In the run up to the election the King’s Fund have written a series of articles to assist the voter to evaluate the state of the NHS. One of these is entitled, Have targets improved NHS performance? The article hedges a lot and describes the pros and cons as they see it. They list the [...]
Leave a comment...