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Thursday, 2 January 2020
quote [ NHS cancer care and kids’ treatments are up for grabs in a stealth Tory sell-off, the Sunday Mirror can reveal.
Private firms are being invited to bid for chunks of our health service – in complete contrast to Boris Johnson ’s repeated election campaign denials. Cardiology, gynaecology, paediatrics and oncology are among the services being offered to companies. ]
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quaint said @ 1:05pm GMT on 4th January
Yeah, yeah. I'll get downmodded because I don't fit with the narrative here, but:
The Labour Party did exactly this back in 2000.
Turns out, it worked quite well. "Patients undergoing surgery in ISTCs were slightly healthier and had less severe conditions than those undergoing surgery in NHS providers". (link: Browne, J., Jamieson, L., Lewsey, J. et al. Case-mix & patients' reports of outcome in Independent Sector Treatment Centres: Comparison with NHS providers. BMC Health Serv Res 8, 78 (2008) doi:10.1186/1472-6963-8-78
The next Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley (who is a Tory, and whose wife is a GP) came along and made it considerably more complicated for non-NHS providers to access the contracts for these things. Lansley's impact on the NHS is still rippling through and will take years more to overcome, but it's in progress.
There are significant problems with private sector outsourcing in the NHS. Routine operations that really are routine, with few potential complications, are the only procedures that should be referred out. Specialism is where efficiency can be realised, so as the cited article states, the contracts are for people who are not old, fat or affected by complex multiple conditions. NHS Primary Care Foundation Trusts (the plural is important) will generally run a few horribly inefficient services, and these are supported by bread and butter routine stuff. The goal is to consolidate these horribly inefficient services into ISTCs who can specialise, improve staff utilisation for providing that service and reduce the need for multiple trusts to offer crappy, inefficient services.
Note - I have significant NHS strategic management experience national and regional level, and (I can't stress this enough) I am not a Tory. I would genuinely love to have a rational discourse on the subject, because the fearmongering about Tories privatising the NHS by doing things that have been done in the NHS for literally the whole life of the NHS is helpful to precisely nobody.
What the biggest problem of a Tory government for the NHS is that the vast majority board-level people in NHS trusts are Guardian-reading "champagne socialists". When the Tories got in back in 2010, I literally saw 20 year CapEx spending plans being brought forward by decades because the narrative was "Let's bankrupt ourselves with unnecessary stuff". Vacancies were left unfilled. Job interviews were literally cancelled and locums, bank staff and agency usage went through the roof, at enormous cost to the NHS. And when the problems inevitably started occurring, it was "because the Tories cut the budget".
The Tories didn't cut the budget, but it suited the narrative of board-level NHS execs trying to get more money.
The absolute last thing the NHS needs is politicisation, from either the left or the right.
quaint said @ 1:23pm GMT on 4th January
Hasn't this already been done?
The Labour Party did exactly this back in 2000.
<-- Entry / Current Comment
quaint said @ 1:05pm GMT on 4th January
Hasn't this already been done?
The Labour Party did exactly this back in 2000.
Tory MP calls for social care insurance for 'those who can afford it'