UKH

Funny dissection of Hunt's appearance yesterday from Uncle Roy:

" Meat and two veg... News and Comment from Roy Lilley

Watching The Tinkerman on the Sunday morning political shows was a bit like eating a Chinese meal. Tasty, interesting, dainty, appetising... and an hour later... your starving. Here's the situation. Ten items on the urgent-fix-it list:
1. A&E crisis, 900% worse than 2010 (Source: NHS Digital)
2. £5bn cuts to social care (Source: NAO)
3. Spend per patient down by 9.1% (Source: IFS)
4. Nurse vacancy rate up by 200% (Source: HoC Library)
5. GP vacancy rate up 500% (Source HoC library)
6. NHS Waiting at 8 year high, 3.9m (Source: NHS Digital)
7. Cancelled operations up 37% (Source: NHS Digital)
8. Nurse pay cut in real terms £2,300 (Source NHS Digital)
9. NHS running deficit £2bn (Source: NHS accounts)
10. £21bn wasted in agency staff (Source: DoH)

According to The Tinkerman, this will all come right after the election if we vote Tory and 'get a good Brexit'.

For the last time, let's nail this Brexit thing; '... we will get the Brexit Germany wants and France agrees with. Trade and expats, from either side, will be a quid-pro-quo. All the rest we'll have to buy into or do ourselves. End of...' On the telly the Tinkerman told us; we are missing the 18 weeks by only 2%, most major conditions have better outcomes, +7,000 of us are alive today but we wouldn't have been in 2012, there are 5,000 more operations, 8% fall in avoidable incidents and more doctors and nurses than ever before....and the average nurse earns £31k, so what's all this about food banks?

We know all this. We also know, averages can be misleading, quality always improves over time, outcomes do get better with techniques and technology and learning not to cut off the wrong leg is hardly rocket science. A Chinese meal, if ever there was one. The prawn crackers came in the guise of a new mental health Bill and 10,000 new MH 'professionals'... by 2020. Right? Well, maybe? Haven't we lost 6,700 MH staff?

MH Staff? 10k at, say, nurse entry wages £23k = £230million plus whatever management, training, CPD, supervision and HEE want to take for doing it. All in three years. I make that, starting today, training and hiring new people at the rate of 60 a week.Don't worry, it ain't gonna happen. Read the small print. It's only a handful of qualified staff, the rest are volunteers. First-aiders. Oh, reducing detained patients? About 6,000 adults and 200 children with mental health issues were detained in police cells in 2014 because of a shortage of space in NHS hospitals. Whilst Home Secretary, Theresa May said the government was 'reducing the numbers'. The 5YFV has it in its sights. The latest numbers halved and show, for children, 43 inappropriate referrals to police cells.

An easy policy win? In September 2016, £15 million of Department of Health funding was announced to increase provision of health-based alternative places of safety and... 'through the Policing and Crime Bill, the government banned the use of police stations for this purpose for under 18s'.

An easy policy win? Neatly; it cuts beds (the real cost) and unless the Bill is carefully drafted, the end of Sec 117 statutory after-care. Also, if a dementia patient is a 'wanderer' they can be detained under the MH Act and their care needs are then paid for by the NHS. Could it mean the end of that?

Is that all there is in the Tory health manifesto? Just a spring roll and sweet and sour pork ball?This is not making policy, it's taking the p***s...

The 'Full-English' came in the guise of the LibDems health manifesto; who have pretty well pinched all the ideas I came up with two years ago and rewrote about last week. Grown up politics. Yes, sorting out the NHS will cost more in taxes. On average £3 a week and hypothecated to be used, focussed and pinpointed on getting the NHS back on its feet. Sorting out the the '10, urgent-fix-it list'. A proper recognition that we can't carry on the way we are and as much as we all like the idea of sorting out the MH mess, as the Jim Reaper said; '...for now, good enough will have to be good enough'... until we can get the basics right and balance the books. The outcome of the general election won't make a blind bit of difference to Jeanne-Claude Junker, Jose Manuel Barroso, Donald Tusk, Frans Timmermans, Martin Schultz or Asterix the Gaul. However... It will make a huge difference to the people whose lives and families depend on the health service. It will make a huge difference to the one million frail elderly who no longer get social-care support. It will make a big difference the 400,000 waiting for an operation. It will make a huge difference to the understaffed nurses, struggling on their shifts and the junior doctors who work around rota gaps. It will make a huge difference to primary care and community care. We've had the Chinese and the Full-English. It'll be interesting to see if Labour can come up with the meat and two veg.
----------------------
Contact Roy - please use this e-address
roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Know something I don't - email me in confidence.
Leaving the NHS, changing jobs - you don't have to say goodbye to us! "