This Is What Happens When You Introduce Choice To The NHS…

Patients losing faith in Basildon Hospital and opting to go elsewhere for treatment has partly caused a NHS £43million overspend.

It seems the patients are opting out because, well, read for yourself:

It has emerged that part of the reason for NHS South West Essex’s colossal cash woes are because more patients last year refused treatment at Basildon, due to concerns over the standard of treatment they would receive.

A bit of an awkward PR situation for the trust?

Barbara Stuttle, director of quality and nursing for the trust, admitted this was a reason, as under Government rules a trust has to pay a penalty tariff if a patient wants to go to a hospital further away.

Mrs Stuttle said: “Yes, that was a factor in the sense that a lot people opted to go to Southend instead of Basildon, and in particular London hospitals, which has a much higher tariff. But Basildon is improving. Let’s put that straight.”

It’ll have to improve quite a lot…

A former nurse who died on Basildon Hospital’s diabetic ward was deprived of insulin for nine hours because her syringe driver was not connected.

D’oh!

Staff on the Mary Seacole ward (Ed: that’s the priority, in the modern NHS – not patients, of course, but ‘diversity’ and political correctness) did not realise the syringe, supposed to be administering insulin to diabetes sufferer Luz Tacon, 61, wasn’t connected until an hour after her death, because it was under her blanket.

In fact, it was a catalogue of errors from start to finish:

Commenting on the breakdown of communication between staff in intensive care and the ward, the report said: “The handover to the late staff was very sparse – no clinical/nursing information was given to the night staff, they only knew a patient was coming later.

“Allegedly, the night nurse was told to look in the handover book that is kept on the ward. This stated that patient Luz Tacon had a sliding scale of insulin.

“On questioning the night nurse, she confirmed she does not generally look in the handover book.”

And that’s why choice is the most important thing to bring to the NHS.

Because when patients can vote with their feet, these actions have consequences.

This ‘Choice’ Thing Is Damned Inconvenient…

Health chiefs hope to stop Basildon and Thurrock heart patients seeking expensive treatment in London as they try to save £120million over the next five years.

South West Essex Primary Care Trust says it is having to spend millions of pounds more than necessary, because too many cardiac patients from the area are seeking treatment in the capital, where it costs 30 per cent more for treatment than locally.

Now, why would they do that? Are there no facilities at Basildon Hospital, perhaps?

This is despite the £60million Cardiothoracic Centre at Basildon Hospital being open for three years.

Oh, so that's not the problem then.

Since the Government introduced a choice system two years ago, NHS patients have the right to be treated anywhere in the country.

However, the trust believes it should be able to force patients to get treatment at Basildon.

Hmmm, now, why would they need to do this? Why the need to coerce their attendance?

After all, if choice is such a good thing, then surely they can find some way to tempt patients back? Maybe the comments will give us a clue:

perini, Leigh on Sea says...

“We are reminding our GPs, consultants and nurses to ensure their patients are fully informed about the first-class specialist services available much closer to home.'

So that'll be the high death rate, the CDiff and Legionnaires disease then! Is it any wonder people want to go to London??

Oh. Good point.

What Basildon needs to do is stop killing its patients.

"Death Rate Recording Is Not Compulsory" Says Department of Health

Missing Out An Essential Issue

During my own investigations around Ward 87, I found out that the death rate ie mortality rate had never been recorded. Essentially, no one knows whether the death rate was statistically better or worse than a similar average ward in the same or different Trust. This example is extrapolated to the subject of Dr Harold Shipman. We all ask ourselves the question - why wasn't he caught sooner? Well, if the Shipman Inquiry is read in detail, you will find that he worked at a number of hospitals. According to the Department of Health document below, recording death rates isn't compulsory therefore there would not have been any death rate statistics monitoring in any wards within these hospitals. There is a reason why the mortality rate is not recorded. The Labour Government does not want poor standards of care to be detected. This is quite a convenient means to deny the existence of poor standards of care.

In summary, if there are no mortality statistics, there will not be a way of early detection of poor care, mismanagement or the next Harold Shipman.

Just to say Dame Janet Smith missed this basic point in her Shipman Inquiry review.

DE00000364718 [ Department of Health]

Dear Dr Pal,

Thank you for your further email of 6 November to the Department of Health about mortality rates. I have been asked to reply on this occasion. I can confirm that there is no regulation or law requiring individual hospital wards to calculate patient death rates. I hope this reply clarifies the Department’s position.

Yours sincerely,

James Butler

Customer Service Centre

Department of Health

UK Death Rates Higher Than Any EU Country

The Business of Death.

A little known article is the Times Daily . I must have talked about this article many times on Ward 87. These statistics have been ignored by the government. They did though release this article a few months later on how "death rates are decreasing". Amazing change in statistics in the shortest time possible for any country :). El Gordo must have been working overtime to ensure the important MRSA stats were not recorded. What they didn't tell us of course is that they only featured selective mortality rates and that half of them were not recorded.

This is what the Times Daily states :-

"Great Britain's big-government National Health Service. Low-quality, taxpayer-funded health care killed more than 17,000 Britons in 2004, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance in London.

The TPA examined the World Health Organization's latest data to contrast the NHS with Dutch, French, German and Spanish health systems, which are less government-dominated. Specifically, the pro-market group measured "mortality amenable to health care" - deaths that a medical organization realistically should prevent.

While those four countries averaged a 106.6 amenable mortality rate, Britain was almost 29 percent deadlier, with its rate of 135.3. The TPA thus calculates that the NHS took the lives of 17,157 Britons who otherwise would have survived were they treated by doctors across the English Channel. This figure is more than two-and-a-half times Britain's yearly alcohol-related deaths, and is quintuple its annual highway fatalities. Comparing 60 million Brits to 300 million Yanks, this is like a federally operated health agency eliminating 85,785 Americans in 2004"

Posted by Dr Rita Pal