Thumbs up for Streeting

[Daygloboo]

Just read Wes Streeting has got second biggest fall in waiting lists in 15 years and ambulances arriving 15 minutes faster. I think that's an achievement in just over a year in government. Bit sick of all the Labour bashing. Dread to think what NHS would be like under orher parties..Waiting lists 20 years long and ambulances arriving 2 weeks after you call ? A packet if painkillers £20. A trip to the GP £ 100 for ten minutes.

If labour are serious about improving outcomes they really need to address the issue of middle managers in the NHS.

I was a clinician for 37 years and have watched the system become so top heavy that it will topple over soon.
"Quality improvement" initiatives, which involved our entire team having to write out long winded diagrams re how to solve a non existent or very minor issue, because our manager "Katie" needed to write it up for her Masters degree. A whole clinical team, out of action for several hours a month, just to help managers move on to the next rung of promotion.

I was the only clinician of my specialty in my team. I had long waiting lists of people desperate to access my service and yet, there I was, wasting time discussing how to improve things instead of being given the time to do my actual job.

Our trust also has team of band 7s, working on producing a file of community resources, despite all of this already having been invented years ago, in the form of the national and excellent "Hub of Hope" app.

A neighbouring Trust has converted a whole ward to being a " clinical research facility". It's been operational since 2019. To date not one piece of research has been published by them. Not one patient has been seen by them. It seems to be staffed by people who were redeployed there after long term sickness. To me it just seems like a huge waste of wages and a ward space, when patients are sleeping in corridors.

It's wasteful, it's frustrating, it's ridiculous and it needs sorting.

Please, please, Wes, sort this.

I agree. With an organisation as big as the NHS and how things work on a practical level the government can’t just click their fingers and magically sort out a major issue.

Labour’s repeated u turns and terrible policies, many not even on their manifesto is bad for stability and instability is bad for the coming.

I mean that big corporations buying up vets causes prices for treatment to go up to ridiculous levels...purely to cream off as much profit as possible, and that if the NHS goes to an insurance base then you can be sure the price of treatment will be similarly raised so that some prople make millions while the rest of us suffer by not being able to afford those treatments that will actually make us well. I just cant understand why people cant see this.

😂

Quite. And like the apparent u turn with digital id, I don’t believe he has actually dropped the idea, he is just going to introduce it more stealthily but he will end up making it compulsory in the long run.

Can only speak as I find.

DH was sent a letter to make an online appointment after being forgotten about. For 2 years. This was chased up by GP. But despite several attempts he was blocked because there are none available in numerous areas. The emphasis being put on the patient to ultimately fail.

I waited 16 months for my colorectal appointment. I saw the specialist who felt I needed a serious op. I initially declined but he wanted to keep me on his list. In his words, he believed if I started with a new referral he would be retired and, in my words, I would be dead.

No doubt I will be told I am negative or anti Streeting. But I can only give my own experience. There is worse, but scaremongering is unhelpful. Hope is all.

Let me help you out. Their policies are unpopular, so they back down. Starmer is viewed as weak and lacking leadership skills. There’s been little economic growth and the cost of living is awful. Look how expensive food is now. They’ve not done anything to control our borders and protect innocent, vulnerable people from drowning. The farmers hate Labour over the inheritance tax issue. Labour made promises to the WASPI women and have broken those promises. Then there’s tax and NI rises and the difficulties small businesses face. We’ve seen a rise in stamp duty, which I particularly dislike. Why should ordinary hardworking families be taxed because they need to move house?

Finally, the government in power is always unpopular.

Because the public only cares about frontline services as demonstrated by this thread (OP is impressed by a headline). CSUs are being closed for no reason whatsoever that I can see, even the unions don't seem to care. If they were doing what they're doing to csu's and ICBs to frontline services there would be uproar

@Daygloboo
Those thinking of voting for parties that want to move to an insurance based system must be crazy

Many major Western countries have insurance-based systems, including systems that rank extremely highly. France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.

The two lowest-performing systems per many rankings are UK and US. Both are places that treat re-thinking their systems as sacrilege. No coincidence I think.

For information , 5 July 2024 was not just over a year ago.

Although they can’t always get an ambulance within 5 hours for a category 2, I understand!

I have used the NHS more in the last 18 months than in the previous 30 years and my experience has been excellent. I do think it's a bit of a postcode lottery but personally I am very grateful for an NHS that Reform would like to strip down and sell off to the highest bidder.

Abdolutely

They’re unpopular with the media…especially daily nazi type red tops…thick stupid people read these rags & are very easily influenced. As for MN users who berate the Labour Party…I just despair!
For context I didn’t vote labour at the last election!

Bloody hell what an arrogant statement to make.

You are half right - the welfare state overall is out of control (not just the position of pensioners). Even those in work need to earn a surprising amount (£40k - £50k per year) before they become net tax contributors to the state… that is because our welfare provision (and areas like the nhs) are increasingly unaffordable.

I think he’s a capable guy, intelligent and practical - my son knows a lot of people back office in parliament and they all say he’s a hard working ‘doer’ . Yes he’s somewhat slick in maybe the way Blair was but I will take that any day of the week over a Lee Anderson type or a rather odd opportunistic fantasist like Polanski - who I think a bit like Anderson has been in most party’s and changed policies and views till he found a nice niche with a vacancy and ‘got on’ -

I think the improvements are patchy.

I’ve been disappointed in Starmer since he became leader of the Labour Party and I still am.

I am disabled and I feel afraid for what’s coming.

I was put on a waiting list in March. I will be seen in about 3/4 years. And that’s just for the initial appointment. I can’t go private. Or I would. Before anyone says anything.

I think you have jumped forward several steps though. Farage seems to be supporting an insurance based system free at the point of use - probably similar to the Australian model (which I understand works quite well).

The NHS already buys in various services from private companies so I assume they’ve already got checks and balances to prevent profiteering.

Many on the left are particularly critical of people who opt out of using public services like healthcare and education but if more people who can afford it were not stigmatised and derided for their willingness to pay more for their healthcare while still paying the taxes that support the NHS (likewise with schools - the VAT grab has massively backfired as students whose parents were paying extra for private education are now back in the state system needing resources) surely that frees up capacity for those who can’t afford it.

The NHS is a vast organisation employing 1.5 million people and spending £204 billion per year in England alone. We know there are eye watering inefficiencies and waste in the NHS, nearly half a billion on unrecovered cost from healthcare tourism every year, millions wasted on restructures/reorgs that make no difference in service delivery and the millions of pounds wasted on defending indefensible lawsuits like Sandie Peggie and the Darlington nurses. Not to mention the costs of suspending good staff on full pay for offences like saying ‘Mr’ in reference to a male patient (convicted rapist) and the future damages paid to unknown numbers of young people medically harmed by giving them puberty blockers, surgery and hormones. The standard compensation for their medical injuries is millions per patient.

There are many amazing frontline staff in the NHS (I have been fortunate enough to receive exemplary treatment over the last few years) but there are too many managers pushing political ideologies or who simply don’t care about waste as it’s not their money.

The definition of madness is going the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. Recent governments have been doing this - just tinkering around edges. I think the NHS is a great service overall but I think we shouldn’t be afraid of standing back and looking at it objectively to see if change could improve things rather than having that prevented by accusations of ‘selling it off for their mates’.

Well, potentially voting for a system that is probably going to make your life much worse IS pretty thick in my book.

Fucking hell, that’s awful 😱

That’s not quality improvement, that’s paperwork for the sake of it

Apart from individual promotion, were there any tangible outcomes to any of this?

Was there any engagement before the hub work took off?

I’m so sorry to pick on you to ask but this is my field and I’m flabbergasted 😱

You are rather disparaging about the vast majority of the country. Yougov polls say 81% wouldn’t vote Labour tomorrow.

Out of interest, why shouldn’t Mumsnet users criticise a terrible government?

The ICB situation is difficult. The concept is 100% spot on but they grew and grew and grew and there is so much duplication. And, a lot of the intended aims are not being fulfilled (better collaboration with social care & getting rid of bed blockers being the obvious one) I hope that Labour rightsizes the ICBs and the rest of the NHS or just revolutionise the whole system. We're spending far too much money, often in the wrong places, and definitely for limited return. It's a bit worrying that they're obliterating NHSE and the ICBs. We surely need one or the other.

All of that said, it is horrific for the people involved who are losing jobs or seeing projects they've worked on for 4 years been stopped completely out of the blue.

But it still baffles me that the media are not going to town on Labour for the cuts. It's easy pickings for the tabloids but yet the public seem totally unaware.

I just love British politics. All the Tories are defecting to Reform, so that Reform is now becoming the old Tory party that broke Britain. And people who moaned about the old Tories and voted them out are now going to vote Reform.....so, effectively, voting back in the party they recently voted out. Honest to god. You just couldnt make it up. Oh ho the hokey cokey. Ahaaaaaaaa. 😂😂😂😂

Well you’re not covering yourself in glory calling people who you don’t know thick just because they disagree with your emotive sweeping statements