"The days of the DGH are numbered"

Lord Darzi of Harlesden

This quote is from Lord Darzi before he started his consultation on the future of NHS provision.
It is quite clear that Nulabour has wanted to close down the network of district general hospitals for many years. District general hospitals provide the bulk of NHS secondary care and employ large numbers of staff. Staff are employed under rigid T&C of service and this leaves little scope for reducing costs within the NHS even with the ready availability of vast numbers of people from Eastern Europe and beyond who would be willing to work for a fraction of current NHS wages. If the service could be provided in a parallel system run by the private sector, issues such as staff wages, qualifications and training could be conveniently circumvented.
Nulabour initially tried a direct approach in Kidderminster and were shocked to lose a safe seat to Dr Richard Taylor who campaigned on keeping the hospital open. Since then more devious methods have been employed including the Darzi review with its sham consultations and predetermined outcome.
Dr Phil Hammond, the clap doctor, medical journalist and TV personality has written on this on a doctors' only medical site called Univadis. His column is like a blog but he gets paid to write it. I don't, so I don't feel too bad about copying it in full because he makes the points I want to make rather well:

"Should we have one union that represents all NHS workers? This thought struck me at a UNISON meeting I was asked to speak at m in Cambridge. The East of England SHA was £800 million in debt when it came into existence and has never quite recovered. Two district general hospitals in Hertfordshire are in the process of being ‘downsized', despite the fact that they are treating more patients than ever, to be replaced by ‘acute care centres' to be run by GPs, allegedly. Management claims that many A&E attendances are inappropriate, but 90% of acute admissions to both hospitals come via A&E. These are hardly inappropriate and if you close the front door of any hospital, what's left is very vulnerable. Job losses have started but any protest by UNISON to the SHA is answered with ‘clinicians want this.'

This is the latest Labour wheeze, to claim that the reform programme is based around what clinicians want. Lord Darzi, a very eminent clinician, is leading the charge, and doubtless in a workforce as diverse as the NHS it's possible to rustle up some pro-Labour doctors to rubber stamp reconfiguration. But the last twenty years of clinical medicine has been about abandoning the dubious opinions of experts and focusing on the best available evidence. The same approach should be applied to NHS reforms.

The best evidence so far on NHS reconfiguration comes from a comprehensive analysis by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. Hardly the most radical organisation, but their message was simple. There is a case for the centralisation of specialist services onto fewer sites, but only in three areas; major trauma, neurosurgery and vascular surgery. However, there is no evidence – in terms of quality and safety - to support the centralisation of the non-complex and high volume work that is the bread and butter of district general hospitals. If you've got any sort of breathing difficulty (asthma, choking, anaphylaxis), you want to get to a local A&E, and quickly.

This report was conveniently buried under all that mock election hubris, superseded by Lord Darzi's interim review which contained such gems as ‘we need to change the way we lead change.' Have you ever met a surgeon who speaks like that? What has ‘new' Labour done to the poor man? His report was largely a smokescreen for the real story, that Labour has ‘approved' 14 private forms to help PCTs with commissioning (McKinsey, UnitedHealth, KPMG, Dr Foster Intelligence (sic) etc). Given that PCT commissioning is worth £64 billion, this is clearly something that a united NHS workforce should challenge. But we're not united, and we still work in silos with ridiculous inter-professional rivalries. And without one union representing us all, from doctors to domestics, we're quietly sleepwalking towards a privatised NHS. I don't think clinicians do want this, but we're too supine to complain. Wakey, wakey. As Joni Mitchell put it; ‘We won't know what we've got till it's gone.' "

Lord Darzi was appointed as Health Minister so that Nulabour can argue that it has listened to the clinicians when they give health care to the private companies to run. If the experiment works they will take the credit; if it doesn't and the population realise they have been hoodwinked when they lose their local services they will blame us.

---------------------------------------

More plagiarism: a joke sent to me from South Africa

The phone rings and the lady of the house answers.
"Hello. Mrs. Ward, please."

"Speaking."

"Mrs. Ward, this is Doctor Jones at the Medical Testing Laboratory.
When your doctor sent your husband's biopsy to the lab yesterday,
a biopsy from another Mr. Ward arrived as well, and we are now uncertain
which one is your husband's.
Frankly the results are either bad or terrible."

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Ward nervously.

"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's,
and the other one tested positive for AIDS. We can't tell which is your
husband's."

"That's dreadful! Can't you do the test again?" asked Mrs. Ward.

Normally we can, but Medicare will only pay for these expensive tests
one time."

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"The people at Medicare recommend that you drop your husband off
somewhere in the middle of town.
If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him."

"Helping the nation spend wisely" Sir John Bourn

A visitor from Mars, looking at the way government spending and taxation have increased over the last 10 years, would surmise that we have wasteful and profligate politicians. On the contrary, our leaders approach government spending as if taxpayers' money was their own and, if they do squander it, they have the National Audit Office to answer to.
The National Audit Office is funded by the taxpayer but independent of government. Sir John Bourn, head of NAO, has, for example, congratulated NHS Direct on its success:
"NHS Direct, the national telephone healthcare advice service operated by nurses, has achieved a high level of customer satisfaction since its introduction. The service, which has been fully available throughout England and Wales since November 2000, has a good safety record. Evidence at the local level suggests that it can help reduce demand on healthcare services provided outside normal working hours, for example by GPs, and is directing callers to more appropriate forms of care during the day." This was the same NHS Direct where the operators pretended to be answering machines to avoid dealing with callers and has been widely blamed for directing patients unnecessarily to A&E departments while conversely delaying the treatment of severely ill children.
On the National Programme for IT in the NHS, Sir John commented:
"Substantial progress has been made with the National Programme for IT. The Programme promises to revolutionise the way in which the NHS uses information to improve services and patient care. But significant challenges remain for the Department and NHS Connecting for Health." This is the same NHShIT that is widely seen as unworkable, overambitious, wasteful and unwanted by the medical profession and is projected to cost more than £20 billion with no measurable benefit. In fact the most widely touted benefit of having the patients records available online in an emergency is now being offered for free by Microsoft, and PACS (digital imaging and archiving), for which the NHShIT is widely praised, owes as much to the NHShIT programme as the move from film to digital photography.
A later NAO report on the progress, (or more accurately the lack of progress) of NHShIT was, according to documents discovered by the BBC, altered by the Department of Health to remove the more critical findings.
Still, even if the NAO isn't as independent as we would like it to be, at least its head, Sir John Bourn, is an honourable man, leaving no stone unturned and enduring any personal hardship in his protection of the public purse.
It comes as a shock therefore to find he has his nose in the trough too. A BBC report of Sir John's spending for the 6 months to September 2007 revealed he had spent £16500 on five overseas trips and £1650 on business meals. This was after having previously been criticised for spending £336,000 on 45 business trips in a 3 year period. Maybe this is not an unusual level of spending for a high ranking public servant but the accounts reveal that the trips were taken as First or Business class and the taxpayer was picking up the tab for entertaining parliamentarians and senior government officials at 5* London hotels and upmarket restaurants. Even more surprising, for the person in charge of safeguarding the taxpayers money, his wife accompanied him on some of the trips and was paid for by the taxpayer. For comparison, the code of practice governing doctors and the pharmaceutical industry stipulates that the choice of venue for meetings should be no better than a doctor would normally choose for themselves and the entertainment of doctors' spouse is strictly prohibited.
One wonders why the taxpayer has been paying for Mrs Bourn to go on overseas trips. It can't be that Sir John is hopeless without her because he managed single handedly on his trips to Kazahkstan, Moldova and Belfast but was accompanied to the much more desirable tourist locations of San Francisco, Lisbon and Venice.
I think the taxpayer will be reassured that our money is being wisely spent to benefit our population and that the NAO is leading the way by example.
Update 25th October
He's resigned

The spin and the reality

The Spin - Happy Shiny People from the DoH "A New Ambition for Stroke" document which sets a target for CT scan within 60 minutes for patients thought to have suffered a stroke.

.................................................................

The Reality - "Many of the buildings, especially at the Kent and Sussex Hospital, were old and in a poor state of repair. Many of the wards did not have sufficient storage, space in utility rooms, or hand basins, making the control of infection difficult. The beds on several wards were much too close together, making it difficult to clean between them and seriously compromising the privacy of patients. Although there had been improvements generally in cleanliness and hygiene since the outbreak was declared, there were still some serious concerns. When we visited, we observed levels of contamination that were unacceptable, such as bedpans that had been washed but were still visibly contaminated with faeces."

"Other medical wards such as Cornwallis and John Day also had high bed occupancy figures of over 100% for several months. Whatman ward consistently had a rate of between 85 and 94%. In April 2006, when functioning as a cohort ward, its bed occupancy rate increased to 110%."

"Many attributed much of the poor care to the shortage of nurses and talked of seeing exhausted nurses in despair, with their heads in their hands. However others talked about poor attitude of some staff, including agency nurses. They described instances of nurses shouting at patients, leaving them unattended for hours, and not providing a proper level of care."

Report of the Healthcare Commission: "Investigation into outbreaks of Clostridium difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust" which killed 90 patients.

We're loving it.

"enhancing the client’s reputation by positioning them as open, engaging, listening and responding."

Readers of the right-wing blogs might come away with the idea that there is widespread dissatisfaction with our current political leader. Readers of medical blogs might think that the millions of pounds of taxpayers money have been wasted. This is far from the truth.

Take Opinion Leader Research for example. This company has been running the Citizens' Juries for NuLabour. OLR thinks taxpayers money has been well spent. Why does this matter? It matters because if OLR thinks it then you think it too - that is their job. They proudly claim: "Opinion Leader influences". Why do they think the money has been well spent? It has been well spent because a large amount of it has gone to them. The tag-line "enhancing the client’s reputation by positioning them as open, engaging, listening and responding." is also from their website. It tells us clearly what our money has bought. It hasn't told us anything about public opinion; it has been used to give the impression that this government cares about public opinion and thus enhances its reputation.

As an extension of the democratic process the Citizens' Juries are profoundly undemocratic. OLR gets to pick the participants and gets to chose the questions. The participants are only told selected aspects of the argument and, in the atmosphere generated during the "consultation" can be manipulated by skilled moderators (or social influencers as OLR prefers to call them). There seems to be no rigorous audit of the selection or voting process.

OLR conducted the "Your Health, Your Care, Your Say" Citizens' Jury for Patricia Hewitt in 2005. Never heard of it? Pulse magazine said:

"The Government has fixed its flagship listening exercise on the future of primary care to ensure it backs pre-stated plans for dual registration, walk-in centres and an increase in private providers."

Sounds familiar? This seems to have been a dry run for the current Darzi review and had only 89 participants.
Pulse later did a FOI Act inquiry on the event. Its conclusions were:

"The finding supports accusations by GPs and academics (Pulse, 24 September) that the consultation was a sham exercise because it focused on a restricted range of issues relating to access, but marginalised others such as continuity of care.

The documents also reveal that Opinion Leader Research was asked to write a proposal for the Your Health, Your Care, Your Say consultation before other organisations were even asked to tender."

It also found out that OLR were chosen instead of other pollsters, ICM and MORI, even though the OLR tender, at over £2,000,000, was more than 10 times higher.

OLR are also involved in "consultations" over nuclear power. An item on the Channel 4 website is eerily familiar:

"In the videos - alternative viewpoints had doom-ridden music in the background. The government's view was then given against calm, relaxing music. I feel I have been mugged."

"Not at all a consultation, merely a sleek marketing ploy."

"I went in with an open mind... myself and others felt we were being misled and manipulated."

So-much-so that Greenpeace withdrew from the consultation and made a formal complaint to the Market Research Standards Board. Unlike the recent Citizens Jury on the NHS, which I documented last month, many people have come forward to complain about the conduct of the Nuclear Energy consultation. Their description of events confirms the tactics routinely used by OLR to give the government the answer it wants while appearing to consult.

OLR's stated aim is to "enhance the client's reputation". Taxpayers are footing the bill for enhancing NuLabours reputation. Well, you can't polish a turd (not even with another turd) so this is money wasted and NuLabours reputation further damaged, if that were possible.

Here's a novel idea for the Clunking Fister. How about we give real democracy a try and let us elect our own Prime Minister?

More NuLabour deceit

Guido Fawkes thinks Yvette was faking it.

A few days after the infamous "Citizens Jury", where selected "participants" were paid £75 cash in plain envelopes, Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and wife of Ed Balls held a webchat on the Downing Street website. I came across this on the thoroughly recommended Guido Fawkes blog.

Transcript of Webchat:
"Karen Doran: What is the government doing to make sure their policy on housing (regeneration and growth) is aligned to policies designed to promote economic growth. Could the Minister give practical examples of the opportunities this presents to local authorities in their place shaping role?
Yvette replies: You are right Karen that new homes need to be planned alongside new jobs -- as we are doing in the Thames Gateway, which is a major area of regeneration and housing growth. But housing and economic policies need to work closely together for existing communities too. Look at what cities like Manchester and Birmingham have done in their city centres -- creating new jobs, but bringing people back into the cities to live as well.

Guido writes:
If that patsy question reads like a planted question, it is because it is almost certainly exactly that. Now why she needed to ask the question in a "public engagement" exercise is beyond Guido. Karen Doran works on the Community Housing Task Force (formerly part of the office of the Deputy Prime Minister) where she advises on "Communications and Consultation Strategy". So it seems unnecessary for her to pose as a member of the public to ask the housing minister a question."

I do wish these revelations got better coverage in the mainstream media because the bloggers already know how deceitful NuLabour are. It needs wider coverage to stop them getting away with this.

Dr Ray gets all heated up.

The, unfortunately named, "Becton Bunny Boiler"

Dr Ray has been drawing admiring glances from Dr Rita Pal, the author of NHSexposedblog. This has all been very welcome and part of me is pleased that someone has finally recognised my stunning good looks, cutting wit and lofty intellect. The image she has of me is a sort of cross between Oscar Wilde and Pierce Brosnan.

I have two problems with this.

Firstly I am a bit concerned about what she might do if our relationship were to turn sour and I prove to be a disappointment to her. Looking through her website, NHSexposed, Dr Pal is not the sort of lady I would like to cross. I don't know the full details of her problems with the GMC but from reading NHSexposed it seems she has taken on the might of the Medical and Legal establishment virtually single-handedly and won.

The second problem, faced by many men of my age, is a pressure to perform adequately. While I am generally happy to tootle along being mediocre with the occasional earthmoving performance, the expectation that I can satisfy Rita on a regular basis is a bit daunting. The Dr Rant team tackle the problem by organising themselves into a sort of shift system so that the pressure is off each individual member. Meanwhile, Dr Crippen, has indeed been the envy of every medical blogger by rising to the challenge on daily basis with enough output left over to fill a couple of pages of a newspaper, but even he has recently had to rest. We hope to see him back with his towering organ in the near future.

If I don't succeed in lowering Rita's expectations gently at least our pet rabbit already died of myxomatosis this summer and our dog is too big to get into a pot

Spending your money wisely

Department of Health Spending Plans

Today I visited the Aston Villa Football Club directors suite for a bit of lunch courtesy of MercuryHealth.
I have mentioned MercuryHealth previously. This company won the contract to provide diagnostic services to the West Midlands as part of NuLabours 2nd wave independant sector contracts. The government has commissioned them to carry out up to 190,000 procedures per year including almost 70,000 MRI scans. The scans are provided by a fleet of 9 mobile MRI scanners and 1 mobile CT scanner each with 2 trailers of supporting facilities.

You might think this is an expensive service to provide, and you would be right. Fortunately, for MercuryHealth, their set up costs have been met by our generous taxpayers who have even guaranteed 80% of projected income over the next 5 years.
We are told that the introduction of the private sector shifts the financial risk away from the taxpayer. We know that has not been true for PFI hospitals and we can see it isn't true with 2nd wave diagnostic centres. We are also told that the NHS is expensive and inefficient and that the private sector would introduce efficiency savings and do the work better and at lower cost. Let us see how true this is.
MercuryHealth was due to start providing its service in April 2007 but the launch was delayed until June 2007. Today we were given the activity figures for the first 3 full months of operation. Total MRI scans for September was 154. That is 9 scanners working 12 hours per day 6 days a week. For comparison, our inefficient NHS unit does 16-20 scans per day on one scanner. Of more interest were the CT scan figures. For the last 3 full months of operation MercuryHealth has carried out 1 scan. That isn't a typo; 1 scan. That is a fully staffed mobile unit with two supporting trailers over a three month period. Our NHS unit does around 25 scans per day and provides an out of hours service. It isn't Mercury's fault. This government was warned that private sector involvement was not needed and not wanted. They were told that what was needed was adequate funding of the NHS units but they had their own agenda (para 139) and went ahead regardless.
Still, I don't think Mercury will be that upset about this because they are being paid anyway. In fact the payment-by-results tariff system means they are paid as much for every patient they do not scan as the NHS unit is paid for every patient we do scan.
To add the final insult to the assembled audience, some letters, allegedly from grateful patients and GPs, were read out. They praised Mercury for the service they provided. I'm not surprised. If we were scanning our only patient in three months at UK-radiology I would treat both the patient and the referrer to a Champagne reception and a night of debauchery at Hereford's finest lap-dancing club. And I wouldn't expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab.