Both major parties have all ready sold the NHS down the river. The only hope is the Lib Dems... oh bugger were doomed!!!

don't bet on it, just yet ...

Well, if we trust the BNP to save the NHS, we may manage to keep the use of hospitals free of charge, but this is rather pointless if half the doctors have been sent home

What I don't get is why hospitals have to compete with each other. I was under the (mistaken) impression that it was the "National" health service, not the "Regional" health service. Wouldn't it make more sense to run the entire NHS as one - buying drugs and stuff in bulk must surely be cheaper than each hospital doing it individually. You'd also get rid of the duplication at each hospital.

They should also get rid of targets and give the people on the front line the decisions as to where the money is spent, the bean counters whould be there to support them, not dictate what they can and cannot spend money on - clinical judgement should me more important (but not at the expense of buying something just because it looks nice and goes "ping!" every so often).

As an aside, anyone know which country has the best state-run health service?

Without looking further I would assume one of the Scandinavian countries such as Denmark.

Yes Sweden has an excellent system. Run on a state owned basis very little of this outsourcing crap.

Ideology. The Tories believe in the free market - they believe competition automatically forces all the people competing to up their game or fall by the wayside. This is wrong, especially for the NHS, for several reasons...

1) Competition isn't always positive. Sometimes the candidates compete on quality of service, sometimes on lowest price. So you either get the best health service available, or the cheapest. I know which I'd prefer but there's no guarantee that's what you'll get.
2) Many studies have shown people don't want a market system in health. If you're talking about anything beyond coughs & colds, what they want is good care that will minimally disrupt their lives, which a national market won't give them. What use is it to someone in Dorset that the best orthopaedic care unit is in Carlisle? What people want is at least 'good' care in the hospital nearest to them and their families, which national competition doesn't get you.


True. Pity we don't do more of that anyway.


The problem is as above - you actually want duplication in each hospital. Ideally, you want all hospitals to provide treatment for say 90% of cases, with the rarest hard to treat 10% managed in specialist units. You don't want people having to travel round the country to get the treatment they want, and patients don't want it either.

Jon

I was thinking more along the lines of supply management - each hospital has it's own buying department, probably with at least one manager. If the hospital simply had a computer which kept track of what was used and automatically reordered when stocks ran low, that would automatically free up resource for use where it's really needed.

How does that work then? Nursing staff filling out forms to inform it of what they've used?

God it's not the 19th century. Most drugs have barcodes on them now and you can get readers for buttons - buy them second hand off supermarkets if you have to. If you want to be smart give them screens and wifi so they can book which drugs go to which patients and feed it back to a database. Give one to each nurse and they can record dosage as it's administered. Recording what medication is given out shouldn't be difficult.

Jon

Call me cynical if you like, but the NHS haven't the greatest track record at those sorts of tech roll outs, have they?
And nurses are a busy lot, by and large. Lugging a palm computer about is just something else to misplace, keep clean and maintain.
I'm also amazed that they don't already scan the meds to keep track of what's where and the quantity. I did find this document which offers some insight into how one area does it - from about 5.3.3 onwards.

An automated Pharmacy at King's College Hospital has already paid off clicky. Saves money and has helped reduce the time patients are in hospital. It all adds up.

As for hospital competition... I don't want them to compete, I want a hospital I go in in the South to be exactly the same as one in the North and I want them all to be good. I don't want to shop around.

I am cynical about how they can even set up such a system. There have been hundreds of millions lost on NHS computer projects over the years.

Ever heard of barcodes? We use them to track chemicals - when you dispose of it you just waft it past the scanner and it updates the database. Simples.

They’ll eventually embed RFID chips in the packaging or bottles. You won’t even need to waft it past a scanner. The system will know when it’s in a bin or not.