Nhs wasting moneyv

[passionflower50]

My husband has farrowwrap leg stocking and wrap for ulcers on his legs .he has large size so last lot came and they sent small .dont fit and can't be sent back so district nurse ordered some more in correct size .they have sent one lot large 2 lots small as in there wisdom they thought they would try small even though they know they don't fit these wraps cost 148 pounds a time what a waste of money .

Yes the NHS needs more money, but the management of current money they have is atrocious and inefficient

I work for the NHS and this absolutely true .

Another NHS worker here and I can 100% vouch for the inefficient way money is spent. You would be shocked to see how money is wasted. It was certainly a real eye opener for me when I began working for them.

My orthopaedic surgeon ordered me some specialist knee splints at a cost of over £2000 each.

The physio didn't even get me strapped into them before I was screaming as whilst they would have straightened my knees he forgot all my joints are badly misaligned due to osteoarthritis! So in the bin they went. Days later I got two more in the post "as spares". I gave them to an ex OT friend of mine as I knew she'd know the best place to pass them onto where they'd be used.

When I saw him he said "ah well it was worth a go" and shrugged his shoulders.

I wasn't allowed to order a pen when I worked in the NHS. Procurement would only allow me to order a box of 200. In the end I bought my own for 79p!

And the box of 200 were of rubbish quality, which is why I never ordered them.

Company's such as B Braun ect make a fortune out of NHS.

If you knew how many problems we got caused with wet wipes blocking drains equipment toilets, and this isn't patients this Is staff any moron knows you don't put them down drains.

I've seen so many examples within my own families experiences of waste of money incidences within the NHS (my dad being given boxes upon boxes of anti sickness and other post chemo meds that he didnt need - all wasted. Ditto continence items (packaged) ditto mobility aids that were unused but not collected. When I cancelled appointments at a hospital dept for DD the calls were not logged and we went down as a no show, (on several occassions) which wastes the clinicians time and makes someone else wait longer for an apt. Multiple letters for appointments at the same clinic with same person on the same day or letters for appointments that have already passed etc etc) These are small examples but can probably be multiplied by their hundreds if not thousands and that is a massive amount of money.

....although I can see why they would not take back meds as cant guarantee they have been stored properly but it should surely be possible to prescribe smaller quantities?

If you knew how many problems we got caused with wet wipes blocking drains equipment toilets, and this isn't patients this Is staff any moron knows you don't put them down drains.

I once did an FM review of maintenance call outs across one of the largest hospital campuses in a particular Health Board area. The number one call out by a country mile, was blocked toilets caused by paper towels or wet wipes. This happened equally in staff, patient and visitors toilet blocks.

I used to work for the NHS and the waste from food right through to medication is absolutely mind blowing.

I've seen wanton wastage with my elderly mum. It's frightening.
Dressings that keep being delivered that she doesn't need , despite being told that they're no longer needed.
She's got boxes of incontinence pads that she can't get through, stocked up in her bedroom, as they're sent too frequently.
I've spoken to the surgery but it's "out of our hands!"

There's no one to talk to. It's like 'the system' has taken over but no one is in charge of 'the system!'

I've also learned that various NHS trusts can spend millions on stationery , with some Trusts spending so much more , per head.
Much like schools.

I once did an FM review of maintenance call outs across one of the largest hospital campuses in a particular Health Board area. The number one call out by a country mile, was blocked toilets caused by paper towels or wet wipes. This happened equally in staff, patient and visitors toilet blocks.

I can imagine.

The staff toilets I use there is paper towels, toilet roll, strewn accross floor.

I often think is this how you live at home.

My dad has more pills than he needs so told the pharmacy not send out a particular one and they said it would be best to send them as it will mess up his future prescriptions. A lack of common sense, both on the NHS and its users parts, is what what costs it thousands and thousands.

@Againstmachine

Company's such as B Braun ect make a fortune out of NHS.

If you knew how many problems we got caused with wet wipes blocking drains equipment toilets, and this isn't patients this Is staff any moron knows you don't put them down drains.

We could only order Dell computers. When they turned up they were old spec by a year at least. I was told to drop my concerns as they're the trust preferred supplier. They charged far more than they would anyone else. For out of date equipment. Simply because the trust would pay for it!

One of many things I saw that annoyed me.

I remember someone once asking in a meeting if it was their money paying for things would they choose the same suppliers or not. It did not go down well. At all.

By the time I left we had no say over who procurement preferred, usually the most expensive option.

should surely be possible to prescribe smaller quantities?

“That’s the size it comes in” is what we were told when we complained to a pharmacist. As a baby my daughter was on a daily iron supplement for her first 6 months. 1ml per day. We were given a 500ml bottle that had to be discarded 30 days after opening. Every month we threw away 470ml of this stuff. The supplier only does 500ml bottles, they are about 20 quid per bottle. So we threw away about 18 quids worth of this stuff every month. In 6 months, that’s over 100. There are 6000 premature babies born every year in Scotland and all of them are given this supplement for 6 months. That’s £36,000 of waste in this one medication alone.

I was part of a clinical network that dealt with the transfer of babies between each unit. Before a baby was transferred, they would be prepped with tubes and wires. The transfer ambulance would turn up and the baby would be re-prepped because the tubes and wires had different connectors. They would arrive at the new unit and have to be retubed and wired because the connectors didn’t fit. They looked in to the possibility of using the same supply chain across different health boards for uniformity but the NHS rules actually forbade that because experience showed when one supplier had multiple contracts, they weren’t competitive. Allowing units to source their own equipment allowed for better competition. In the end they had to apply for a waiver of that rule, not because they were concerned about cost but because of trauma to these tiny babies having to be intubated multiple times. It did work out cheaper when you factored in the wastage, but I expect ten years on, they are being gouged on price for these things by the company they chose.

*600,000 obviously!

@WorraLiberty

YANBU

A few years ago my Aunt had a commode chair delivered by the NHS (she'd had a fall). For whatever reason, she ended up not needing it.

She rang and asked them if they'd come and pick it up, as it was still in its bubble wrap packaging, so it was clear it had never been used.

They said no because there was no-one to coordinate picking it up and they didn't have the space to store it anyway

She ended up giving it to a local Hospice I think.

We had this ordered my nan some bed rails she got sick and died we told them we no longer needed them they told us we still had to have them we hadn't even collected them ffs they could have been given to someone else the person on the phone was saying "well we don't know if she died of anything contagious so we can't take them back" we were you haven't even DELIVERED them yet "yeah so delivery is next week and you can dispose of them then" I mean WTF?

If the wraps werent taken out of the plastic packaging at all, then we could use them for someone else, after giving the packaging a wipe down and then quarantining them.
I have been known to do this with high cost dressings, if they are in date and the packaging is intact, we keep them to one side to use for another patient in the future, obviously check the expiry dates again before using them.
We do try not to overorder or over supply products in the first place and also check they are the correct dressing before taking them out to patients. Wounds change and the need for certain dressings can too.

Our local district nurses will happily take sealed unused dressings and bandages and so on. I know this because they often brought out stuff to treat my mum with other patients names on it.

The pharmacy cannot reissue but the nurses should have no issue accepting these items.

The biggest waste in the nhs is via overpaid managers who have absolutely no idea what it’s like on the ground floor. If they took the the bottom up approach promised 20 odd years ago we wouldn’t be in this mess.

@frumpety this is what my OT friend did with my "spares". The outter packaging was opened but the actual items weren't. Orthopaedic consultant said to just bin them!

I could write pages about the waste and mismanagement in the NHS. From the very top to the bottom. It is really dreadful. Most people just wouldn't believe it.

yeah so delivery is next week and you can dispose of them then

Presumably you just refused the delivery?

I work for the NHS in IT. The amount of money wasted due to lazy and useless staff is really quite shocking.

WhitedressParis @ that’s rather a sweeping statement, are you just talking about it or generally?