Reply to: oh dear: Majority of voters back tax rises to bolster NHS

[clearedforlanding]

Maybe cutting out this sort of tulip will save the tax payer some money.

CFL bills Hays 800 GBP per day.
Hays bills BT Exact 886 GBP per day
BT Exact bills Accenture 1400 GBP per day.
Accenture bills the NHS N3 project 2600 GBP per day.

In 2004/5. To audit firewall rules. Security project was canned after 10 months. Thats over half a million pounds for **** all.

[WTFH]

The wife was getting a grand for a 4 hour Saturday morning shift to sit and administer flu jags.

Mental.

So you’re part of the problem.

[minestrone]

The wife was getting a grand for a 4 hour Saturday morning shift to sit and administer flu jags.

Mental.

[vetran]

A relative was a medical secretary for years she was offered freebies from drug reps with varying values to try an secure access to the doctors some were fairly high value. That apparently stopped a few years ago.

I worked with hospitals a few years ago and finding their elbow in the admin department would be considered impossible.

The last time I was in I waited days for tests despite it being clear I could get them via outpatients. The Nurses that were busy spent most of the day talking about east enders and the poor sod next to me in his 90s nearly died of starvation.

Another relative who has had cancer for years and had the tumour cut out and was doing well but had a relapse he was throwing up and looked like a ghost they had him a month in hospital before they released him without a diagnosis and a few weeks later finally confirmed it was back. Throughout pretty much every doctor had a different opinion so the poor guy didn't know what the hell was going on.

I know there are plenty that do a good job in the NHS but it is disorganised and feudal from what I can see.

[al_cam]

As for procurement, well after seeing a line of pharma reps trying to sell overinflated priced drugs while trying to share their "lunch" with certain parties to sweeten the deal (marks and sparks with enough food to feed 5 people), this among other things (Issues involving RiO & bed blocking) meant I decided to head back into the private sector and forsake ever working again for the NHS.

I know a lot about pharma. I think it unlikely any healthcare professional would order any drug in return for a sandwich. They wouldn't be able to anyway as drug decisions are made centrally.
Drug reps visit healthcare professionals to give them information about the drugs and their use. They hope the drugs then get prescribed but there are no guarantees.
My wife is a pharmacologist first and a rep second. She knows more about her specialist disease area than most of her customers.
Pharma sales is highly regulated in the UK. Think of it like
IR35. The government treats pharma like they do contractors - constantly harassing them. That said, they had a bad reputation in the old days - taking doctors on golfing holidays etc. Those days are gone but the reputation will remain for years yet.

I can see it all imploding soon. The fact is that the NHS doesn't give the best drugs, they give the cheapest even if the big picture shows that overall they are more expensive due to being less effective for instance. The budgets are in different hands and there is no joined up thinking. The pharma companies are sick of the restrictions and so are those prescribing. Most know there are better options for the health of their patients and hate that some bean counter dictates what they can do.

It feels so wrong but I am seriously considering using a private GP. I can afford it. I care about my health.

There are solutions - others have mentioned procurement. I did an NHS gig where they paid full list price for servers. Joined up thinking in prescribing guidelines is needed and why not offer a top up option to patients - for instance, allowing them to pay the extra for better drugs.

It all seems so simple, sadly it never is...

[al_cam]

Name a country that provides better care for the money?
And evidence it.

I never said a word about other countries.
Not sure why you felt the need to be so confrontational.

[SueEllen]

Whoa! Stop right there.

A "face to face" survey on a topic like this is completely worthless, because who will reply "No I don't want to pay more tax. I'm happy for pensioners to die on trolleys in corridors, etc, etc" ?

All one can conclude is that voters are happy to _say_ they are willing to pay more tax, but words are cheap!

No point giving the NHS more mone if you cannot get people to safely leave hospital.

[OwlHoot]

Voters are ready by nearly two to one to pay more tax to bolster the NHS. A large face-to-face survey ...

Whoa! Stop right there.

A "face to face" survey on a topic like this is completely worthless, because who will reply "No I don't want to pay more tax. I'm happy for pensioners to die on trolleys in corridors, etc, etc" ?

All one can conclude is that voters are happy to _say_ they are willing to pay more tax, but words are cheap!

[WTFH]

As for procurement, well after seeing a line of pharma reps trying to sell overinflated priced drugs while trying to share their "lunch" with certain parties to sweeten the deal (marks and sparks with enough food to feed 5 people), this among other things (Issues involving RiO & bed blocking) meant I decided to head back into the private sector and forsake ever working again for the NHS.

Having worked on the other side of the fence, NHSBSA and NHSSC should be scrapped. It was a "wonderful" idea from a few years ago to take NHS procurement and make it a profit centre. The procurement groups would negotiate with the suppliers, then sell on to the trusts at inflated prices. The suppliers cut their margins (and went in with loss leaders), then NHSSC puts their markup on it, and sells on at higher than the price the trusts would pay if they went direct to the suppliers (and the suppliers made their normal profits).
To make sure that NHSSC don't make too much money there is a thing called the "Anti-embarrassment cap" which says that if NHSSC makes more profit than a certain level (not a percentage, but an actual figure) then it has to pass some of it on to the NHS. In the first 6 years of existence, the NHSSC never hit that figure, but still managed to make a healthy profit

[BlackCountryContractor]

My Mother worked in the NHS admin for many years. She worked very hard to improve things but it wasn't easy.

Her take was first sack 50% of the management, overpaid and useless. Secondly, the procurement process needs reform, the NHS pays far more for materials than the private sector.

I know many including myself (former NHS IT contractor) who agree with that statement of firing management, the NHS needs a independent equivalent of professional standards (police) to start looking at corruption & misconduct of NHS managers.

As for procurement, well after seeing a line of pharma reps trying to sell overinflated priced drugs while trying to share their "lunch" with certain parties to sweeten the deal (marks and sparks with enough food to feed 5 people), this among other things (Issues involving RiO & bed blocking) meant I decided to head back into the private sector and forsake ever working again for the NHS.

[TwoWolves]

My Mother worked in the NHS admin for many years. She worked very hard to improve things but it wasn't easy.

Her take was first sack 50% of the management, overpaid and useless. Secondly, the procurement process needs reform, the NHS pays far more for materials than the private sector.

[minestrone]

And while were on the topic of food advice as someone who deals with all the FCA regulation and the 10 billion subsections and rules on offering financial advice I'm not sure why the nutrition people don't have something similar in place. I'm just dealing with money, they are dealing with people's lives.

You can't go 10 minutes these days without someone advising you to stick a diced cumquat up your dungbox to cure some ailment. This quackery and bad science needs to be addressed.

[minestrone]

Don't most of them eat better though?

At the weekend one of my relations, who is a senior bod in the NHS, was moaning about the tulip patients eat and the fact they don't know they need to exercise their bodies regularly. Her moans back up studies that show we eat the most processed crap as a nation in Europe.

A balanced diet is going to help you not getting cancer but it isn't going to take your tumour away once its there. And processed foods is really just code word for 'what poor people eat'. Olive oil, pasta, tomato sauces, tinned fish, cereals, skimmed milks are all processed foods and a life time of eating those types of foods in a balanced diet should work out well for you.

Remember when Usain Bolt consumed 1000 chicken nuggets over 10 days at the Olympics and broke 3 world records? Everyone was screaming about what type of example that set for children as it didn't fit in with their mung bean stew outlook on life. Mental. He broke 3 world records.

Cancer survival rates are tulip in the UK because the NHS is tulip. 62 day target from detection to treatment is hit about 80% of the time and is falling. Add in the 2 weeks it took you to get to see the GP and you are probably already fooked before treatment starts.

Centrally planned state monopolies are crap, all the evidence is in on that and there is not debate on this anymore. The sooner we get shot of the NHS the better.

[darmstadt]

Sack a few hundred NHS managers and see if anybody notices the difference. And while we're at it, cut their advertising budget. We all know we shouldn't eat sh!t, but why are they spending millions telling us what we already know? As if that's going to change our behaviour. For every thousand the NHS spends, Maccy D's spends about fifty thousand. Net effect, fairly close to f**k all. Pointless waste of public money.

This...

[Mordac]

Sack a few hundred NHS managers and see if anybody notices the difference. And while we're at it, cut their advertising budget. We all know we shouldn't eat sh!t, but why are they spending millions telling us what we already know? As if that's going to change our behaviour. For every thousand the NHS spends, Maccy D's spends about fifty thousand. Net effect, fairly close to f**k all. Pointless waste of public money.