The cost of running the NHS is in the news again today, Monitor (the sector regulator for Health Services) have asked the 46 Foundation Trusts within England to review their finances due the expected deficit by the end of the current financial year.
We should stop providing free healthcare, other than emergency treatment, to non-residents. Residency would be proved with an ID card which can only be obtained with proof of continuing employment. Tourists would still receive cover as their insurance companies would be billed directly and automatically.
I have several friends in the Ambulance service - one of them told me a story of their dispatch receiving a call detailing a case of electrocution. They arrived at the property under 'blues' to find the patient sitting drinking tea. Asking when the electrocution happened they were told 'oh, about 3 weeks ago, but when I arrived in the country I was told I could get free treatment so I called 999'.
We are constantly being told that there is a shortage of doctors and consultants leading to vacancies in hospitals. This is clearly not the case as those vacancies are able to be filled with expensive agency medics. The Government should make the decision that with effect from the 1st April 2016, NO agency use will be funded within NHS hospitals.
Similarly with nurses and support roles.
Non-clinical supplies should be purchased from wherever gives the best price, not just from an 'approved list' of suppliers who charge 2, 3 or even 4 times the amount available on the open market.
Stop using taxis to transport notes and drugs. No-one is discharged instantly, so there is time to have any prescribed drugs ready for the patient to take with them. If notes need to be moved across sites, there are porters who would be able to do this using a pool vehicle.
Stop restructuring! It costs millions to implement new structures which could go on patient care.
I heard this on a news bulletin whilst I was on my way home from work. What surprised me was not the headline itself but people's reactions to it.
As is the way of local news providers, reporters had gone out to get the views of the people on the street. One person said that she thought that the Police were not doing enough to help families.
Why is up to the Police to raise people's children for them? Why does everything have to be someone else's fault? Can people no longer take responsibility for anything?
For the most part, and there will always be exceptions I know, the attitudes of the child come from the attitudes of the parent.
Maybe the courts and prisons need to become tougher, with the threat of a prison service acting as a deterrent instead of the holiday camps they appear to have become with TVs in cells, PlayStations, being able to sue the Prison Service for having a too thin mattress
Why did we spend, in 2013, up to £275 per day per prisoner when, according to the NHS
, the average cost of a hospital bed day is £225? Are people who have broken the law worth more than a law abiding person who had the misfortune to fall ill?
Take the prisons back to basics, 3 healthy meals a day but no menu choice - you eat what you are given or you go hungry. Remove the TVs and the PlayStations. Reduce time the prisoners have for socialising. Stop supplying extra clothes. Remove prisoner's Human Rights. If prisoners riot and damage their cells, then let them carry on living in it. Dirty Protest? They sleep in it.
And use all the money saved to buoy up the NHS.
