Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[Neil]

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

The NHS is way over managed. .....

 

I would be interested to see some statistics to back this up. I'm not saying you're wrong but equally I'm not saying you're right.

 

 

2 hours ago, Hobby said:

Fine, I'll agree to differ with you, no problem.

 

But the point I was making and you have ignored that just ploughing more and more money into it is simply throwing good money after bad. It needs a full review to decide exactly what our Society needs from it and we won't get that whilst people carry on clamouring for more and more money to be thrown at it whilst ignoring the fact that it's becoming more and more "not fit for purpose". I despair when I see such kneejerk reactions.

 

I'll agree that there are bits of the NHS that don't work as they should. The one that has been known for a long time is bed blocking because adequate funding for adult social care has not been in place for a long time. Both my late mother in law and more recently my late father were bed blockers. There are currently severe staff shortages in the care sector; low pay and low status have been endemic in the profession for years. A review solely into the NHS won't fix these problems and as long as they remain the NHS won't be able to perform as it would wish. None of this will be cheap to fix and I'd suggest that spending more on care, across public services would be a laudable aim.

[durham light infantry]

15 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

I fully intend to continue to have a life through this pandemic - have "fun" in your bunkers of disapproval you all and I'll try not to be put off by the hand wringing and catastrophising.

 

Have any of you built any small trains while this is all going on?

 

Just a thought.....

 

Simon

 

 

 

 

Not much modelling done here in the last 2 years, as I am one of the 3 million health and social care workers whose lives have been trashed over the last 2 years.

 

I am owed 4 weeks holiday which I will never get to take, or get paid for.

I have worked more and longer shifts .

I have watched and listened helpless as residents have died.

I nearly died from Covid.

I am spending the rest of my life with damage to my lungs caused by Covid.

 

We need to do whatever is neccessary to to limit the damage of Omicron. It's too late to stop it now and even Cassandra would be wringing her hands at the inevitable prospect of more lives lost.

 

I just hope you don't need medical attention in the next 5 years or so. As everyone in health care from the receptionists to the consultants are burnt out, worn out, pissed off and despairing of a minority of the great British public .

 

[APOLLO]

IT projects ?

 

Amazon has it right, airline ticketing also. There are many others.

 

Top down reorganisation doesn't work (in the NHS) - the last person in the line is the patient, always the last to be considered and dealt with (seemingly) contempt. This oft tried method simply doesn't work.

 

Start from the bottom, the basics, get customer (patient) contact / information / booking / appointments etc etc right first. Work upwards from there. Weed out the un needed costs. A bit at a time, but do it ASAP.

 

I'm a member of the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust  (non active). Communication is a joke, all the senior management seem to do is self congratulate. Just not on.

 

Brit15

 

 

[durham light infantry]

9 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

 all the senior management seem to do is self congratulate. Just not on.

 

Brit15

 

 

 

We had a visit from a recently appointed senior manager about a month ago. She trashed the place and put what little morale there was through the floor.

 

"It's all a bit sh*t " she said to me

 

I replied "Looking down you see sh*t , looking up we see a***holes"

 

I am still employed...

Edited December 12, 2021 by durham light infantry
Profanity blocked

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

Start from the bottom, the basics, get customer (patient) contact / information / booking / appointments etc etc right first. Work upwards from there.

I’d go with that. Whatever objective/purpose the NHS has, it has to start with the people who are supposed to benefit from it.

 

A mega-question though is whether it’s meant to be a health service, or an illness service. At the moment, the vast majority of the focus is on the latter, and that may not be the place to start of trying to get the purpose clear.

[Hobby]

31 minutes ago, Neil said:

 

I'll agree that there are bits of the NHS that don't work as they should. The one that has been known for a long time is bed blocking because adequate funding for adult social care has not been in place for a long time. Both my late mother in law and more recently my late father were bed blockers. There are currently severe staff shortages in the care sector; low pay and low status have been endemic in the profession for years. A review solely into the NHS won't fix these problems and as long as they remain the NHS won't be able to perform as it would wish. None of this will be cheap to fix and I'd suggest that spending more on care, across public services would be a laudable aim.

 

It is a review of health care myself and many others are suggesting, Neil, the NHS is a major part of it but only a part. However continuing to throw money at it without doing anything else I do not believe is a viable option. However one thing I will not do is try to pre judge the outcome like you are doing. I don't know what the answers are, that's for someone better qualified than us to say, it may be it needs more money, then fine, spend it, but it may not, it may be it needs to be used better.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Hobby

[APOLLO]

Just now, Neil said:

 

I would be interested to see some statistics to back this up. I'm not saying you're wrong but equally I'm not saying you're right.

 

 

This article is 8 years old - wages have increased

 

The number of elite NHS "super-managers" being paid up to £240,000 a year to implement the government's controversial health service reforms has soared to more than four times the level originally expected by ministers, the Observer can reveal.

The latest official figures – which show a total of 428 "very senior managers" (VSMs) working in the newly constituted NHS bureaucracy – undermine David Cameron's repeated claims to be slashing management posts and costs at every level in the service.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/10/nhs-super-managers-428-nurse-pay

 

Also

 

https://news.sky.com/nhs-in-numbers

 

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/key-facts-figures-nhs

 

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/mar/30/nhs-management-costs-spending

 

And this

 

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/funding/autumn-budget-and-spending-review-2021-what-you-need-to-know

 

There is mention of hundreds of millions of pounds for funding into workforce, however there are no clear commitments to expanding the medical workforce, and hundreds of millions falls far short of the BMA's calls for billions in investment into the medical workforce.

Neither does the spending review address the crisis within primary care, with no clear plan for how the Government’s aim of 50 million more primary care appointments will be delivered.

 

I could go on. The Sky graphic is very telling

248886 Admin & Management, 

31395 GP's

19575 Foundation Doctors.

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Getting back to Hayfield’s point about things that are successfully delivered, one thing you will find in successful cases is that the definition of success/purpose was crystal clear, measurable, and wasn’t shifting about all over the place all the time.

 

Deliver a safe and effective vaccination against Covid-19, as fast as possible.

 

Put a man on the moon, bring him back alive, and do it before the soviets do the same.

 

Eject the nazi regime and restore/install liberal democracy across Western Europe.

 

c1945: put in place a system across the U.K. that delivers universal basic healthcare and hospital treatment free at the point of use.
 

(Remembering that what people desperately wanted at the time, in the light of very bitter experience pre-WW2, was access to medical provision which was well within the capability of science at the time, but which most people either couldn’t access at all, because it cost more than they could afford, or might get if they were lucky enough to be in the zone of a charity-provider).

 

All very clear, and even the third and fourth examples are ‘testable’ to some degree, and all delivered, although of course the weakness in testability of the 1945 NHS objective, the lack of absolutely firm definition, has been the cause of head-scratching ever since.

 

The “NHS problem” is insoluble without a clear, measurable objective/purpose. What is the Pole Star by which to navigate?

[hayfield]

2 hours ago, Neil said:

 

I would be interested to see some statistics to back this up. I'm not saying you're wrong but equally I'm not saying you're right.

 

 

 

I spent a week in hospital 7 years ago, the front line staff doctors and nurses were run off their feet

 

What was obvious was the number of staff without any form of medical uniform or equipment, just milling around. Granted some of these may have been social workers etc, but as the place was devoid of them in the evening or at weekends

 

two friends left school to become medical secretaries, so the medical profession needs clerical staff, my brother in law left school and became a hospital administrator finishing his career high up in the NHS network.

 

Clearly we don't need doctors doing the books, on the other hand we don't want empires of unnecessary backroom staff 

 

Again the quicker social care is run by either the NHS or a national equivalent the better, as you say bed blocking is wrong. My mother in law recently spent a week in hospital after breaking her hip, then 10 days in a cottage hospital. Perhaps this is the way to go

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

 

What was obvious was the number of staff without any form of medical uniform or equipment, just milling around. Granted some of these may have been social workers etc, but as the place was devoid of them in the evening or at weekends

 

 

Not all un-uniformed people are non medical, my sister has been a nurse since she was 20 and about to retire, one of her more recent roles was to investigate unexpected deaths in or following visits to hospital.  Not a nice job, the purpose being to ensure deaths were understood and if they were avoidable.  Wouldn't require a uniform but nevertheless an important role for improvement in the management of health in ever more complicated circumstances.  I am sure there are a lot of other roles populated by medical people that are not front line but extremely important to the running of the service.

[Not Jeremy]

19 hours ago, Neil said:

 

Sorry Simon I'm not so sure that hospitals and the medical side of things have been properly resourced in the UK for some time. GP numbers falling, ambulances waiting outside A&E until their patients can be admitted, increasing waiting times for routine treatments, vulnerable patients well enough to be discharged but unable to because of a shortage of care home beds or home care workers all suggest to me that there's been a lack of resources/funding for some time.

 

I agree with you Neil, but that wasn't what I was saying.

 

I was simply observing that the NHS has not (thus far) been overwhelmed by Covid, and that was a good thing and something of an achievement.

 

That there are numerous issues I would agree, as evidenced by much of the dicusssion after my post.

 

Simon

[John M Upton]

UK Covid alert raised to Level 4 and Boris addressing the nation at 20:00.

That's Christmas cancelled then.

[Not Jeremy]

19 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Well, forecast number of MPs likely to vote against Plan B vary, and doubtless many who do vote against it will be in favour of some parts, but unable to stomach others. But, I certainly heard an interview on the radio with one MP (IIRC from Essex), who seemed against all restrictions, and was talking big about leaving his party over it. Mind you, he did strike me as what you call a raving nutter, so maybe it is just raving nutters.

 

Out of interest, you can actually read what the MPs against Plan B think here 

 

 

 

You must be mixing-up posters, because you will look in vain for me using language that colourful.

 

Call me a right wing raving loony if you like, but I really do not think that "voting against plan B" constitutes the sort of "lunatic denial" that you have previously described and to which I was (I thought unequivocally) expressly referring to in my earlier post.

 

As far as to whom I was referring with my footie comment, no it was clearly not you.

 

I am generally or mostly talking about the thread when I make comments, and I find it genuinely interesting to read and hear about alternative points of view.

 

If only others here were so open minded, or is that unfair, I don't know....

 

Simon

[woodenhead]

2 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

UK Covid alert raised to Level 4 and Boris addressing the nation at 20:00.

That's Christmas cancelled then.

It seems each time another thing comes out about Christmas parties he appears on TV with yet more restrictions.

 

Sorry if that sounds political, but I don't know if this is people against them leaking stuff ahead of planned announcements, or a PR reaction after the release - a proper chicken and egg thing and us the public are taking the hiding.

[woodenhead]

5 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

Call me a right wing raving loony if you like, but I really do not think that "voting against plan B" constitutes the sort of "lunatic denial" that you have previously described and to which I was (I thought unequivocally) expressly referring to in my earlier post.

 

As far as to whom I was referring with my footie comment, no it was clearly not you.

 

I am generally or mostly talking about the thread when I make comments, and I find it genuinely interesting to read and hear about alternative points of view.

 

If only others here were so open minded, or is that unfair, I don't know....

 

Simon

I don't think they are all raving nutters, I think there has come a point where the actions of one part of the party has set it against the other and they are seeing knee jerk reactions which feel wrong.

 

I still don't get how it is so dangerous to go into a church unless you are singing that you need a mask, yet places that sell alchoholic beverages for consumption on the premises are perfectly safe even if you are not singing.

 

Remembering that singing and shouting was banned quite early on in the initial stages of Covid because it propelled so much around people.

 

Confused, yes I am.

[Nearholmer]

22 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

really do not think that "voting against plan B" constitutes the sort of "lunatic denial" that you have previously described

Read what I wrote, which was pretty carefully phrased, and please try not to put words into my mouth.

Anyway, leaving that aside, other than not talk about it all so much, what would you advocate should be done now? Plan B; not Plan B; plan B plus; or, what?

 

And, I’m with Woodenhead that the PM now has a truly gigantic credibility problem, which really isn’t what any of us need right now. Having a leader who nobody believes, in the face of impending crisis doesn’t feel good.

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Nearholmer

[John M Upton]

Presumably regarding any 'plan', Boris is getting his special crayons out for this one before he speaks to the nation tonight.

[APOLLO]

Boris WAS at the party and ate all my mince pies !!!

 

 

Brit15

[Not Jeremy]

20 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Thats a moral dilemma hospitals are trying to avoid…

 

imagine your a doctor, and a 75yr old triple vaxxer with covid comes in, next to them is a 25 year old anti-vaxxer… showing the same symptons, both otherwise good health. , both need icu, and you have 1 space available.

 

 

 

A pointless bit of hypothetical jeopardy - the sort of nonsense that Jeremy Vine is so very good at.

 

Another bastion of the mighty BBC.

 

Just sayin......

[Not Jeremy]

55 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Read what I wrote, which was pretty carefully phrased, and please try not to put words into my mouth.

Anyway, leaving that aside, other than not talk about it all so much, what would you advocate should be done now? Plan B; not Plan B; plan B plus; or, what?

 

And, I’m with Woodenhead that the PM now has a truly gigantic credibility problem, which really isn’t what any of us need right now. Having a leader who nobody believes, in the face of impending crisis doesn’t feel good.

 

 

Hi Kevin

 

OK, I'm giving up and am bowing out for now at least

 

It would be good if you could at least some of the time address points that are put to you.

 

I did read what you wrote.

 

Perhaps you might return the favour sometime?

 

Simon

 

 

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

It seems each time another thing comes out about Christmas parties he appears on TV with yet more restrictions.

 

Sorry if that sounds political, but I don't know if this is people against them leaking stuff ahead of planned announcements, or a PR reaction after the release - a proper chicken and egg thing and us the public are taking the hiding.

Or he is ignoring the “slings and arrows” and still listening to the experts and trying to protect the public/country and doing the job.

 

And this coming from an almost lifelong Labour supporter. We don’t know or probably will never know the real facts, but we certainly get the total colouring one way or another by the Press.

 

Its never been a perfect world.

[rocor]

6 hours ago, APOLLO said:

 

 

Start from the bottom, the basics, get customer (patient) contact / information / booking / appointments etc etc right first. Work upwards from there. Weed out the un needed costs. A bit at a time, but do it ASAP.

 

 

 

That way, you will find yourself at the pinnacle of the pyramid, long before reaching the top. So that a small but very expensive slice can be dispensed with.

[Nearholmer]

3 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Or he is ignoring the “slings and arrows” and still listening to the experts and trying to protect the public/country and doing the job.

Personally, I think he is doing exactly that on the omicron problem.

 

But, all the other stuff has damaged his credibility to a degree whereby lots of people just don’t believe anything he says, even when what he says is both true and important. Which really isn’t good for any of us.

[Andy Hayter]

10 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

 

A pointless bit of hypothetical jeopardy - the sort of nonsense that Jeremy Vine is so very good at.

 

Another bastion of the mighty BBC.

 

Just sayin......

 

It is hypothetical but it only remains hypothetical until it becomes real.

 

Omicron was first published 17 days ago.  Identified in the UK 14 days ago.  I see they report the first hospitalisations today.  It fits the pattern of what we know about this virus thus far and it it is not so much of a stretch to expect that resources will be stretched to the point where decisions of who to treat could - and I stress could - become necessary.  Whether any of these will become public might depend on the extent that this happens.  A few cases and it may never come to light.  Rather more and we can expect this to be publicised.

[adb968008]

The message about Omicron isnt being taken very seriously in central london this afternoon…

 

Spot the mask could replace wheres wally..

No social distancing, no fear, the place was packed solid on a sunday afternoon.

 

I know they are outdoor, but theres crowds like a football match but no one’s checking anyone walking through the door, inside any shop is little different.

 

The air isn’t clean and fresh with that crowd.

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by adb968008