Hello, it’s Monday morning. You’re probably in a rush and I only have 700 words, so let’s roll-up our sleeves and get on with it…
Rishi Sunak has told us, should he become PM, what his plans are, for the health service. Let’s have a look.
He’s got five big ideas:
1.Place the NHS on a war-footing.
Too late mate. It’s already been blitzed.
2.Discharge patients, who are well enough, to go home, to ‘virtual wards’.
Too late mate. The NHS is already doing it… since March 2020.
…and as the Trusts doing it will tell you, it can be risky, costs a lot of money to set-up, places demands on IT systems that they are unprepared for, needs to be consultant-led and…
… to run the concept safely, senior, experienced people are vital and…
… if you’re not careful, can lead to overstretched community services filling-in, when things go wrong, at evenings and weekends.
3.Scale-up the use of private care.
Too late mate. The NHS is already doing it. Since August 2020.
As waiting list have grown, more people have turned to the private sector.
Here’s the catch…
NHS work is done at tariff. Private hospital, self-payers treatment, is done at premium prices and that gives them a better margin.
Why would they want NHS business? And…
… the private sector is concentrated 60% in the London area, relies on NHS surgeons, anaesthetists and others, working weekends and evenings and whilst the private sector has post-op recovery rooms, few have ITU…
… that means, if things go seriously wrong, like the rest of us, they have to phone 999, for an ambulance, as they did nearly 600 times last year… and we know how long that can take.
4.Access to a GP will be via NHS111, who will direct them to a GP or other service.
Too late mate, the NHS is already doing it. Since April 2020.
As far as I know there is no, click-ready, national software that will access the variety of GPs’ appointment systems and…
…I doubt practice managers will want the DH+ poking around their computers and…
…who will be the data guardian?
As this idea won’t create more hours in the day, it won’t create more appointments.
5.Many of the country’s 58,000 vacant, high-street shops would be ‘transformed’ into community diagnostic hubs where, says Rishi:
‘… people could get MRI and CT scans and see specialists on their doorstep’.
Too late mate. The NHS is already doing it. Since October, 2020, actually. But…
… progress will now, stop. Why?
Because… the pay review body awarded the NHS, across the board, a 4.5% uplift but only 3% was funded by the Treasury.
The 1.5% balance, worth around £2bn, has to be found from existing NHSE budgets. In consequence, NHSE announced it’s cutting diagnostics and technology budgets.
Rishi, listen to yer Uncle Roy; whoever your health advisor is, give ‘em the elbow. They’re lazy, poorly informed and make you look stupid.
Here are four better, simple ideas that will actually solve your problems, that you can action from day one…
1.Take all the money you might have put into your schemes and give it to social care.
If you must have a ‘war-time’ motif, ask them to recruit and train, Care Commandoes … to work behind the front-lines of care! The Tory faithful love all that.
Pay carers more than the £9.01ph they are paid now. Think in terms of £13.
2. Steal Liz Truss’ idea to give mums and dad’s tax breaks to look after kids at home and extend it to looking after elderly relatives. They do it in Germany, and it works.
When social care works, the NHS works and capacity problems disappear.
With beds freed-up, patients can be moved through A&E and ambulance queues disappear.
No virtual wards required. People looked after, safely, in the right place… not in an electronic no-man’s-land.
Elective care beds, now being used for overspill medical patients, who cannot get home safely, become free to be used by patients for their new hips and knees.
Invest in the NHS’ surgical hubs and watch the waiting lists come down.
In-house diagnostic kit, imaging and workforce can be used in real time, not sometime, in the high-street.
3.Use the private sector if it is a Tory emblem but if you sort out the consultants’ labyrinthine tax-problems more work could be done in the NHS.
4.Workforce is critical. Four hundred a week are leaving.
You must fund training placements, fully and; find the money to insist all Trusts provide free car parking, have flexible rota software, provide hot meals 24/7, make breaks mandatory, make all training free, say thank you and mean it.
I hope this helps, Rishi.
If you need any more ideas, just ask the 1.3m experts working in the NHS.
All you have to do is ask… before it’s too late, mate.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
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