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Issue: 10 <\/b><\/p>\n
February 2014<\/b><\/p>\n
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This occasional newsletter is researched, written and edited by a group of concerned residents in Ealing, West London who want to preserve our NHS. We view the wholesale engagement of private, for-profit healthcare service suppliers as unnecessary, profligate and dangerous. Process improvement is what is needed in our NHS \u2013 not revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n In this issue:<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n + More on Clause 118 \u2013 fascist\/communist approach to NHS Decision Making<\/span><\/p>\n + Blue Lights Still Flashing at A&Es<\/span><\/p>\n + A&E Closure Offers No Help to Dying Baby<\/span><\/p>\n + We Spend Less\/Head than Other Countries on Government Health Spending<\/span><\/p>\n + Want to give Atos Your Identifiable Medical Health records?<\/span><\/p>\n + Will Chemists \u00a0Replace or Augment GPs?<\/span><\/p>\n + Mental Health Beds Nightmare<\/span><\/p>\n + The People\u2019s Inquiry for London\u2019s NHS<\/span><\/p>\n + England\u2019s NHS in Numbers<\/span><\/p>\n + No Smoking Anywhere for the Dying, those in Pain and Anxious Carers<\/span><\/p>\n + Circle Private Healthcare on the Sick List <\/span><\/p>\n +Upcoming Events<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Clause 118 Update<\/b><\/p>\n Clause 118 is a proposed amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill currently going through Parliament. It will effectively allow the Secretary of State for Health to close, merge or privatise any hospital willy-nilly. The sweeping new powers would mean that decisions about local hospital provision could be taken in as little as 40 days, regardless of how hospitals are performing. Absolute power will be granted to Trust Special Administrators (TSAs) to make these decisions without any requirement for community engagement or public consultation. A TSA would be brought in under the \u2018Unsustainable Provider Regime\u2019 to ride roughshod over local views and impose a reorganisation of any part of any Trusts in the vicinity of the \u2018Failing Trust\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Opponents of Clause 118 include the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, Save Lewisham Hospital, Unite, the GMB, Our NHS, Keep Our NHS Public, National Health Action Party, NHS Support Federation, GMB and Ealing TUC Save Our NHS Campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A final vote in Parliament is due in February 2014. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Accident & Emergency Departments in England in Crisis<\/b><\/p>\n Dr Cliff Mann, President of the College of Emergency Medicine, says that there should be 260 new A&E Registrars each year, but over the last three years only half that number have been recruited.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many A&E doctors are working at understaffed A&E departments throughout England. Mann describes these working environments as \u2018intense, unremitting and increasingly unrewarding\u2019. Doctors regularly work extended shifts and weekend shifts.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ideas have been mooted for visitors to England, immigrants to England and English expatriates to pay for treatment at NHS Hospital A&E departments. So, as well as NHS A&E staff overnight on Friday and Saturdays nights cleaning up vomit, breaking up fights and episodes with drunks, drug addicts and the mentally ill, \u00a0they will also have to act as surrogate immigration officials. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to a poll conducted by \u2018The Guardian\u2019 newspaper 88% of GPs don\u2019t believe that the 2004 GP contract changes have contributed to greater overcrowding in NHS A&E units. The changes meant that GPs no longer had to provide out-of-hours care. Jeremy Hunt has often cited the 2004 contract changes as a key contributor to current A&E overcrowding.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Labour Party has calculated that spending on temporary locums in A&E in England is up 60% since 2009. \u00a383 million was spent on A&E locums last year, with some temporary staff earning \u00a31,500 per shift.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In January 2014 the NHS announced it would give more money to support A&E units. The money was originally to be spent by local NHS organisations to set up initiatives to reduce avoidable trips to A&E. According to \u2018The Guardian\u2019 very few of these schemes have been set up. Monitor, the NHS Regulator, will decide which A&Es get more cash and how much. Critics say that the current funding rules have deprived A&E units of \u00a3500 million a year.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Annual attendance at A&E units in England in 2003 was 16,516,845 and in 2013 it was 21,724, 841.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two Year Old Boy Dies After Mother Rushes Him to Chase Farm Hospital A&E \u2013 Only To Find It Closed<\/b><\/p>\n A sick two year old boy \u2013 Muhammad Hashir Naveed \u2013 was rushed by his 27 year old mother Maryam to her local Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield at 3:00am on 15 January 2014. The Government closed this A&E unit on 9 December 2013 \u2013 but tragically Maryam did not know this. She frantically got a nurse on the phone and an ambulance was called. It took her son to Middlesex Hospital A&E in Edmonton some five miles away. However it was too late to save him and he died at 4:00am.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n No-one knows whether the so called Urgent Care Centre (UCC) at Chase Farm Hospital could have saved Muhammad\u2019s life. This is all a bit irrelevant though as the UCC closed for the night six hours before mother and baby arrived outside the defunct A&E building.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Are We Spending Too Little on Our NHS?<\/b><\/p>\n The World Health Organisation (WHO) has calculated the per capita spend (in $s) of Government spending on health. The UK rate at $2,919\/head is way below the US at $4,437, The Netherlands ($3,991) and Denmark ($3,861). We also lag behind Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, France and Belgium.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do You Trust the Government Not To Sell Your Identifiable Personal Medical Records?<\/b><\/p>\n The Government wants us all to agree to our personal medical records being anonymised or \u2018pseudonymised\u2019 by civil servants and then sold off to anyone who wants to buy them. 26 million Government leaflets aimed at trying to persuade us all to go along with this have been printed and are now being delivered to households throughout England.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This data for sale will include personal data, including National Insurance Number, date of birth, mental health, cancer and substance abuse habit data. Prime potential data purchasers would be insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants and private healthcare suppliers.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Government recently set up the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) which will administer the data collection, pseudonymisation and sale of this data. Worryingly the HSCIC boasts a Public Assurance Director. Even he admits that with plenty of other data a third party could identify individual patients from the data supplied by HSCIC.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Also worryingly, the pseudonymisation software is being written by none other than Atos. The software and the service Atos will create and manage is grandly called the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES). Atos has been working on the software since early 2012. Atos is famous (or possibly infamous) as the software and service supplier for the much discredited Incapacity Benefit assessment service.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And just what is the Government\u2019s recent track record in handling and managing people\u2019s personal medical histories? In a word \u2013 disastrous. Prime Minister Blair\u2019s \u00a0\u2018NHS National Programme for IT\u2019 in 2000 had as one of its objectives the creation (in just three years) of a single electronic system for storing patient records in England which ultimately would be accessible 24\/7 by anyone authorised to do so. What happened? The project lurched from crisis to crisis and was effectively abandoned massively unfinished in 2011 with a loss of at least \u00a320 billion to the taxpayer.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And Now It\u2019s Pharmacists Who Will Be Our NHS \u2018Primary\u2019 Care Entry Point <\/b><\/p>\n NHS England, The Royal College of GPs and Pharmacy Voice have proposed that NHS primary care triage should be carried out at your local Chemist\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, Patient Concern is not happy with the idea that Pharmacists act as almost a \u2018gatekeeper\u2019 to conventional NHS Primary and Secondary Care. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quite frankly, if we are unwell we need someone trained in healthcare \u2013 not in medicines \u2013 to carry out first contact diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. A severe headache could be treated with pain killers off the chemist\u2019s shelf, but it could also require brain surgery. It\u2019s unlikely that Pharmacists would be able to offer any \u2018medicine\u2019 to treat first contact mentally ill people. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However here at Ealing Hospital the A&E and other units will be wound down over the next six years. When \u00a0seeing your GP might take days or a week; the NHS 111 telephone service response is slow or deficient; you are not Internet savvy or connected and can\u2019t go online to NHS Choices, then many more ill people are likely turn to their local chemist to help them. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n More on Shortages of NHS Mental Health Beds<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The \u2018Sunday Times\u2019 has revealed results of research by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP). It was stated that there were 32,000 mental health beds in England and Wales in 2004. \u2018Community Care\u2019 magazine has also revealed that in 2011\/12 that number in England had dropped to 18,924.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The RCP says that the number of acute mental health beds currently available in the NHS in England has fallen by at least 1,700 since April 2011 \u2013 a drop of 9%. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lack of locally available beds is resulting in treatment delays, and in some cases suicide. In other emergency cases mentally ill patients have variously travelled from Croydon to Hertfordshire, Kent to Somerset and Kent to Carlisle. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The RCP\u2019s recommended maximum occupancy rate for acute psychiatric beds is 85%. Of the 28 Mental Health Trusts who responded to the research all reported occupancy rates of over 85%. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has revealed that the number of people detained for mental health treatment under the Mental Health Act was 50,408 in 2012\/13. This represents a 14% rise over the five previous years from – 44,093 in 2008\/9. CQC also criticised the fact that more than three quarters of wards in mental health hospitals were denying basic human rights such as patients\u2019 use of the internet, use of a mobile phone and use of a secure outdoor space where they could smoke. Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and a group of MPs have all expressed their concern over these figures, the lack of staff and the implementation of the Goverenment\u2019s laudable aspiration to give mental health \u2018parity of esteem \u2018 with physical health.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And in a January 2014 announcement worthy of inclusion in \u2018Alice in Wonderland\u2019, the Government stated that mental health patients are to have the same right to choose where they are treated as those with physical health problems. Let\u2019s hope the mentally ill who live in Croydon choose to be treated in Hertfordshire and those in Kent continue to choose Somerset and Carlisle for their treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The People\u2019s Inquiry for London\u2019s NHS<\/b><\/p>\n The People\u2019s Inquiry is a unique, independent exercise in gathering and analysing many peoples\u2019 views on and experiences in London\u2019s NHS. Seven hearings were held across London over October, November and December 2013. At these meetings people presented verbal and written evidence. Funded by the Unite Union the inquiry is chaired by experienced NHS analyst Roy Lilley. The six person panel is currently reviewing and discussing the submissions of almost 100 people. A detailed response with recommendations is expected in March 2014. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n An overview of the structure of the final report has been released and its headlines are:<\/span><\/p>\n
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