With all the 'cost-cutting' exercises within the national Health Service isnt it time that the plug was pulled on this clearly inefficient bug ridden service?
Cleaners at an NHS hospital with a poor record on superbugs have been told to turn over dirty sheets instead of using fresh ones between patients to save money.
The Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coalfield reported a deficit of £6million last year and was subject to a report by the Audit Commission because of its poor financial standing.
It recorded 36 cases of MRSA from April last year to January, while cases of clostridium difficile have more than doubled in less than a year to 327. A Government hit squad was drafted in to solve the infection problems last year but the trust is still failing to hit MRSA targets.
Each sucessive government we have proclaim to take on the health service at the mammouth costs to us tax payers when will it stop?
I would imagine the announced closure of the local ambulance service was another cost cutting measure. It amazes me why any government should plough so much money trying to plug a serious problem which will never go away

It's not inefficient though, we spend less on healthcare per person in the UK than any comparable country. Considering this and the almost Soviet nature of our target-driven centrally planned system, we do ok in general. You could say that it is ineffective but given the resources it has (and has had, decades of tight capital spending can't be remedied in a few years) it is pretty efficient.

In the US they spend double what we do (and increasing rapidly) but life expectancy is lower, infant mortality is higher and the chances of dying before retirement age are higher. That is wasteful inefficiency.

The NHS isn't great, it could certainly be improved but I would be looking to continental European social insurance based systems rather than US style private provision.

The costs of the NHS are not 'mammoth', they would almost certainly be higher under most alternative systems.

Well Jonesey if you think its efficient to go into hospital and have the chance of catching a life threatening bug(MRSA) . The standards of British Healthcare are clearly very poor. They may look good on paper but c'mon please. So how many years do yuo give this institution to sort itself out?

Clearly the NHS is riddled with problems. What private sector alternatives are there?

Efficient is not the same as good. Efficient means it does well considering the money it has to work with. Almost every other health system in the developed world spends more per person than we do.

To be honest despite all of the scare stories I think the NHS is ok. My partner recently gave birth at the RSH and although some of the facilities are a bit dated the care she was given was very good and the staff were top notch.

The communist style scheme that we have at the moment isn't ideal though, if I was reforming the service I would do something along these lines:

The system should be paid for through general taxation to ensure universal access.

All hospitals and other treatment providers should be privatised or made into trusts that are independent of government.

These providers should charge patients for their services.

Citizens should each be given an allowance of healthcare vouchers of a couple of hundred pounds per year by the government that will cover basic treatment like medical and dental check-ups etc. Pensioners, children would get more vouchers because they need more care.

If diagnosed by a primary care practitioner with an illness, you get given a voucher to spend on whatever treatment you like for that illness wherever you want. The rate of the voucher for each illness would be set in negotiations between the government who are paying for the vouchers and the providers carrying out the service.

Chronic conditions would lead to an increase in the annual voucher allowance for that individual.

These vouchers would then be used to pay the bills from the healthcare provider.

Healthcare vouchers could be redeemed for cash with the government by all registered health providers.

Any providers not carrying out a good standard of work would be barred from redeeming vouchers.

There would be a neutral government agency a bit like the job centre or citizens advice bureau which could advise patients on which treatment provider to choose based on success rates and other factors.

This would mean that everybody has access to the healthcare they need but there is also choice and competition which should improve standards across the board. Some health providers might want to charge more than the government voucher rate for a treatment in which case the citizen would have to pay the extra out of their own pocket but presumably they would only do this if they were getting something extra-special.

Whether there is the politicacl will in this country for such a radical change though I don't know.

One big scare story on tonights Panorama. clic here Clearly the NHS is definately in crisis what a documentary RSH Maternity Unit were mentioned ,blundering, serious mistakes here from people we see as proffessionals. Very thought provoking and very worrying too!

We had great care in February when my son was born at RSH, there are staff shortages in parts of the country though. Panorama is just another of those scare-fest programmes these days, trying to make the situation look as bad as possible to sensationalise and get more viewers.

Well in this case the programme was very factual with undercover nurses theres really no escaping it!

Yes, i'm sure it did happen but you don't really think that was the only footage they recorded do you? They probably had hours of footage on the cutting room floor of people receiving perfectly good care and they chose to go to hospitals that they knew were having problems, you can't neccessarily conclude from that that every hospital is similar.

There is a general shortage of midwives because they don't get paid very well to do a very stressful job with antisocial hours (although it's not too low compared to average salaries nationally, starting at £19k, £23k after a year, up to £36k for senior midwives and up to £73k for midwife consultants), if the NHS was subject to market forces hospitals would raise salaries to attract staff depending on their local situation rather than have pay scales dictated centrally which would help resolve the problem.

Which comes back to my origional point and answers it for me really. How long can people keep excusing this somewhat poor service. How many more mistakes can they make taking account these 'mistakes' can be life threatening?

fair enough, and i've posted my suggestion for reform, just don't expect 'mistakes' to stop if the system is changed that's all. Human error will always occur.