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BLOGS
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Stephanie Allen
:Behind the Façade of the G8
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Jeremy Cook
:The King Is Dead, Love Live the Carney
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Boyan S. Benev
:Protesting with the Police on Your Side
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John Worne
:Why Soft Power Is Hard for Governments
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Matthew Reed
:The New Anti-Social Behaviour Bill Risks Criminalising Children for Being Children
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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
We're all aware of the challenges faced by the NHS and its staff, and how savings have made life difficult for a lot of people working in Trusts across the UK, but what doesn't really help patients and their families - which is what the NHS is there to do - is flaming, berating, scaremongering and being straight-up inappropriate on places like Twitter.
As the stream of policy discussions and floated ideas for the NHS continue to emerge, I and my family have had unfortunate cause to realise just how much of what the health service does is impossible to "value".
For political reasons, Jeremy Hunt has turned this whole issue into a crisis of primary care. The trouble is he has a real crisis in A&E that isn't going away - and the measures he is proposing won't solve it, as the advice from NHS England makes clear. In fact, by focusing his department's attention on the wrong target, he could make matters even worse.
If the NHS is going to survive for the next generation, it simply must evolve new models of provision. NHS 111 is moving in exactly the right direction. In fact, it should be going further. It is just a shame it was sent off prematurely, an unfinished car with a new driver on a half-built road.
For those of you who don't know, I'm a superhero. I'm not bragging. It's a fact. I'm different from you.
As you can imagine, having staple foods such as bread, pasta and flour mixes on prescription is a vital lifeline for the majority of those who have to follow a gluten free diet, especially those where such carbohydrate rich food sources are important in their nutritional regime, such as diabetics.
There is a real danger we make it impossible for disabled people to be part of the community. The Paralympics effect was about making disabled people more visible. The crisis in social care for disabled people - to mis-use Lord Coe's quote - could mean we simply never see disabled people again.
Whilst the Mayor may not be in the business of running healthcare services, he does have a responsibility to combat health inequalities. There couldn't be a bigger health inequality than some communities having access to great quality services, whilst others are forced to suffer the burden of travelling tens of miles to access services that they should be able to get locally.
We are doctors. We do health. We do not have armies of lawyers and specialists in tendering and procurement at our disposal. We would rather invest in nurses, dieticians and pharmacists - and I would rather see patients than have to fight for the survival of our HIV service.
Today NHS managers want to sell off part of the Whittington site, cutting almost 570 jobs to leave the hospital with reduced maternity services, ward closures and fewer beds for the elderly. Why cut funding for something which works? At what cost is the government saving costs?
Repealing the 1948 Act will not reduce the amount the NHS is required to pay to meet claimants' future care needs. In the majority of cases involving catastrophic injuries - such as birth injury, acquired brain injury and spinal injury claims - the claimant requires social rather than nursing/medical care.
Our leadership challenge now is to show quickly that we have the ability to take the Francis report and make sure the NHS, the services it provides and the trust the British public have in it increases and enhances its reputation as one of the world's leading health care systems.
We are on the eve of an earthquake in the National Health Service. On 6 February, Robert Francis QC, will present his report into what Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has described as "perhaps the most shocking betrayal of NHS founding values in its history".
As long as people (and the media) focus on doom and the possibility of doom, then people will read about it, talk about it and wait for it to happen.
I think that, as a society, the shocking level of treatment for some of our most vulnerable members should make us all angry - and that this anger should propel us all to take action, in whatever way we see fit, until we remedy this deplorable situation.
The potential in health is absolutely enormous. With free-flowing and reliable data we could better understand the causes of illness, identify the best ways to treat, and eliminate many of the irritating inefficiencies that today seem to just be part of being ill.
