NHS WASTE

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
 

NHS patient record services in the East Midlands are being outsourced, with the loss of about 90 jobs. Nine Primary Care Trusts have agreed a contract with NHS SBS, a partnership of the Department of Health and IT firm Steria, with some work going to India. Health officials said the move will save up to £9m over six years and will not impact on patient care. The move will see payment processing, cervical and breast cancer screening correspondence, medical records and patient registration done by the new firm. NHS staff have been told the current workforce of about 150 will be reduced to 65, based at offices in Leicester and Derby .

Officials insisted sensitive information would not be sent abroad. Andrew Booth, of NHS Derby City, said, "There are some services which are being provided from India but the majority of services will be located in this country. No clinical data will be in India, it is all based in servers here. From an information governance side, for accessing data there, which I know has been a concern, actually the Indian operation has been independently validated as being as good as, if not better, than in this country." The nine Primary Care Trusts involved are NHS Bassetlaw, NHS Derby City, NHS Derbyshire County, NHS Leicester City, NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland, NHS Lincolnshire, NHS Northamptonshire, NHS Nottingham City and NHS Nottinghamshire County. (Source: BBC News, Aug/10)

The number of bureaucrats in the NHS is growing six times as quickly as the number of nurses. While the number of health service managers went up 12% in one year, the number of nurses increased by less than 2% and the number of health visitors dropped. Since Labour came to power, the number of managers has almost doubled, partly as a result of the need to monitor stringent Whitehall targets on waiting times. This is despite the fact that Tony Blair's 1997 manifesto promised to 'raise spending in real terms every year and spend the money on patients not bureaucracy'. Meanwhile there has been a fall in health visitors, who are vital to ensuring children and the elderly get the best possible care in the community.

Numbers have fallen by a fifth since 1999, so that there are now four times as many managers as health visitors. The rise in bureaucrats comes as ministers are urging the NHS to slash management costs by a third, raising the prospect of huge job losses and associated high redundancy costs. Overall, the number of NHS staff increased to record levels, according to the NHS Information Centre. There are now more than 1.4million working in the Health Service, more than one in 50 people in the country, making it one of the largest employers in the world behind the likes of the Chinese Army.

The news comes a day after it emerged NHS productivity had fallen by 3% since 2001, largely because too many staff were employed and because they have been given such generous pay increases. The annual NHS workforce survey reveals that in 2009 there were 1,432,000 workers in the Health Service, up 63,300 (4.6%) on the previous year; and up almost a third on the 1999 total. There are 375,500 qualified nurses, up 7,080 (1.9%) on 2008 and a quarter higher than in 1999 and there are 44,660 managers, up 4,750 (11.9%) on 2008 and 84% higher than a decade before. (Source: Daily Mail, Mar/10)

A Swiss man paralysed five years ago in a skiing accident has chosen to end his life early in the UK after shunning the local suicide clinic a few minutes drive from his home. Max Friedland said, "I want to end my life but I don’t want to actually commit suicide. Which is why I have chosen a routine minor operation in an NHS hospital." Friedland, has an appointment in February at a London hospital for the removal of a benign mole on his back.

He said, "I am hoping that this short overnight stay coupled with the surgery will be enough for me to contract one of the many viruses present in NHS hospitals, C Diff, Norovirus, MRSA, I don’t mind as long as death is quick and relatively pain free." Asked whether he approved of the plan, health secretary Alan Johnson said, "To be able to welcome people from abroad who have specifically chosen the NHS for their procedures just shows how far we have come in recent years. It’s nice to see someone making a positive choice to use the NHS for once."

Mr Friedland’s family are supporting his decision to end his life by staying in an English hospital. His wife said, "It would be easy for him to make the short journey to Dignitas and to drink a lethal cocktail of chemicals, but he wants to end his life ended without intervention. We understand that if the superbug viruses don’t get him, then it is highly likely that some poor exhausted doctor will deliver a fatal incorrect dose of medicine to him, which is a nice safety net to have."

Mr Friedland had originally been planning to end his life next summer but asked for his suicidal visit to England could be brought forward. He said, "I was getting fed up with all those calls from Radio 4’s ‘The Moral Maze’. If anything made me want to end my life more quickly it was the prospect of talking to Michael Buerk about complex ethical dilemmas of our time." (Source: News Biscuit, Jan/09)

Thousands of prescription forms, carrying the names and addresses of patients, go missing every year as they are transported around the NHS. The government has admitted that almost 300,000 have been lost or stolen in England since 1997. A spokesman for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said that prescription form loss, while rare, was inconvenient to pharmacists and could possibly see patient data falling into the wrong hands.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that clear guidance on "information governance" was available to the NHS, and a further review of security was underway and added, "There are electronic systems on the way, but no system would be perfect, and there would still have to be a paper back-up somewhere. The NHS takes the protection of patient data extremely seriously." (Source: BBC News, Mar/08)

More than 5,500 nurses who qualified this year cannot find jobs. Up to £187million has been wasted training the nurses, while NHS hospitals fill positions with cheaper healthcare assistants. The Royal College of Nursing discovered that nearly a third of the 17,824 nurses who graduated in the UK this year still haven't found work. Many are having to sign on the dole, or are considering looking overseas for jobs.

It costs the Government £34,000 to put a student through a three-year training degree but hospitals are saving cash by employing low-paid healthcare assistants instead. Widespread debt across NHS Trusts means there are also recruitment freezes in place. The RCN says some student nurses are applying for healthcare assistant jobs just to get their foot on the career ladder, only to find they are rejected for being over-qualified. (Source: Sunday Mirror, Aug/07)

Around £592million of NHS money has been paid out over mistakes as the compensation culture booms. Almost a third went directly into the pockets of lawyers involved in negligence claims in 2006 alone. Experts say increasing numbers of cases are being taken to court by "no win no fee" solicitors, who tout for business even in A&E waiting rooms. If they win, these lawyers ask the court for more in costs than legal aid would, to cover their risk.

In 2005/06, a total of £166million went on legal fees, for both defence and prosecution lawyers, up from £99million in 2001/02. The Department of Health figures also show there has been a steep rise in the payouts claimants receive. The total figure stands at £426million for 2005/06, up from £345million in 2002/03. Many of these claims are the result of serious surgical mistakes and accidents in hospital. For example, two patients a week leave hospital with surgical instruments still inside them.

Over the past three years, the NHS paid out £4.3million for 283 claims of lost implements including swabs, a catheter, a metal clip and a contraceptive coil. In total around 6,000 cases against the NHS go to court every year. A Health Department spokesman said, "The Government's policy is that it is right that NHS patients who are injured as a result of clinical negligence should be able to obtain correct and full compensation." (Source: Daily Mail, Jul/07)

Budgets for family doctors and other essential NHS treatments have been cut by £12million in order to buy methadone for heroin addicts in prison. The new programme represents a move away from trying to get prisoners off drugs to simply allowing them to continue their addiction at the taxpayers' expense. It is funded by taking money from NHS Primary Care Trusts which run GP surgeries, walk-in treatment centres and community health projects.

The Integrated Drug Treatment scheme, which is being tried out in 45 prisons, is likely to be expanded to jails all over the country. Seventeen prisons are currently running the full programme, prescribing the heroin substitute to wean inmates off the Class A drug and also giving them counselling but the remaining 28 jails distribute methadone without providing any psychological or psychiatric support.

Some prison experts have admitted that getting prisoners off drugs in jail may cause them to take fatal overdoses when they are released. They also fear a repeat of a recent case in which 200 heroin addicts behind bars were awarded £700,000 out-of-court compensation after accusing prison chiefs of forcing them to go through 'cold turkey' rather than giving them heroin substitutes to wean them off their addiction more slowly.

That case set a legal precedent, making prison governors reluctant to order any short-sharp-shock treatment programmes. The Department of Health confirmed Primary Care Trusts have put £12million into the scheme so far while the Home Office has given another £5million. In 2006, Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust in West London spent £125,786 on methadone for inmates at Wormwood Scrubs prison. The bill for 2008 is expected to be nearly £170,000. (Source: Daily Mail, Feb/07)

Britons visiting Poland are being threatened with deportation if they are taken ill and need hospital treatment while in the country. The warning comes from the Polish Government despite arrangements which mean the NHS will treat Poles free of charge if they fall sick in Britain. It follows claims from the British Medical Association that patients could be turned away from UK doctors' surgeries because they have been swamped by Eastern Europeans.

The Polish Government claims its deportation threat is legal and necessary to protect its citizens from infections from abroad. Polish Home Ministry spokesman Witold Liwicki said, "We have a right to protect our citizens. We're eliminating the threat of an epidemic." He claimed Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had introduced similar legislation. The Polish authorities claim the new law is based on an EU directive which allows exceptions to the free movement of EU citizens, including cases where they represent a threat to public health. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Feb/07)

<<< Prev