What should we do with the NHS?
- Thread starter Wiseman_Vaughn
- Start date
I've looked at this numerous times as part of my job. The figure of £300m is just the average cost multiplied by the number of appointments. It's irrelevant if that time isn't spare. We don't have people sat around not working if someone doesn't show. Every clinic is full and lasts the length of the slot. If everyone turns up then there tends to be some over run.
The time sending letters and rearranging appointments again if you are looking at it correctly, as marginal costs, is tiny. We're employing people to do that job and if there were no DNAs we'd be employing the same amount of people so there is some wasted effort but there'd be no cost saving.
There is a huge difference between efficiency, cost saving and utilisation.
Trust me. The problems within the NHS have nothing to do with people not turning up for appointments and everything to do with there not being enough staff to significantly increase capacity throughout the system as well as increasing capacity in the care system to reduce the demand for NHS services.
Even if the £300m figure was close to being accurate it is such a tiny number in the scale of the NHS. It's not even enough to effect rounding to the closest billion on the NHS budget. The only reason it is mentioned is to plant the seed that we should start charging people.
r00fie1
Well-known member
Osboro
Well-known member
Are you a simpleton?
The Tories have been destroying the NHS bit by bit since its inception ( something the tories voted against en- bloc)
They do it by underfunding ( the amounts they quote include payments and grants to private companies) and then act surprised when it starts to break .
Then comes the suggestion that only the introduction of profit will fix the" NHS we love"
If we fund it correctly and run it correctly we can ALL AFFORD health care as and when we NEED it.
God forbid you ever have to consider affordabilty regard a child or a loved one.
We are humans, not balance sheets.
Wiseman_Vaughn
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Osboro
Well-known member
Tolerant?
Do you read newspapers. Do you watch current affairs news programmes. Do you not read some of the many many threads on the running down of the NHS over the past many many years? Do you make your self aware of the progression through parliament of acts designed to run down the NHS
I'll be tolerant if you ask the question having done any research whatsoever, but it's clear with such a simplistic question your either stupid or a shill. Which is it?
Do you read newspapers. Do you watch current affairs news programmes. Do you not read some of the many many threads on the running down of the NHS over the past many many years? Do you make your self aware of the progression through parliament of acts designed to run down the NHS
I'll be tolerant if you ask the question having done any research whatsoever, but it's clear with such a simplistic question your either stupid or a shill. Which is it?
Wiseman_Vaughn
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Osboro
Well-known member
Think about why you find this funny.
If you can explain why I'd like to hear it.
Oh! And by the way, those that can pay are paying , it's called NI. Its just the money isn't going where it should. No doubt that will cause you to chuckle too.
Wiseman_Vaughn
Well-known member
I don't want to particularly engage with you. You seem very angry and abusive but for the sake of this thread, I will reply to you.
I was simply asking for new ideas on how the health service could be funded because as ever, the people at the bottom of the pile are always the first to suffer.
I expressed an opinion that was contrary to yours. It wasn't theoretical - just logical that if you could pay more to support the NHS. maybe you should.
There appears to be no polotical will to REALLY solve the problems in the NHS ether from this lot or the other lot that we will be stuck with next.
I'm not a Cretin or worse - Tory. Just an ordinary bloke as frustrated as you.
If you feel the need to start name calling or projecting your obvious intolerance and anger - this is not the place to do it. This is a football message board where all ideas and views should be tolerated and discussed. You don't seem to be able to do either.
EDIT: What I actually found funny was your response. Talk about OTT - I just wanted to clarify that becuse I didn't want to trivialise the subject as you were suggesting.
Osboro
Well-known member
I apologise. I feel passionately about the NHS. Access to Health care is the greatest definer of class in an un caring world. My answer to your original question is have a completely separate entity , provide by legally defined amounts measured on anything other than profit.
I'm sorry I misread your post but I'm really REALLY angry about how we as a country are allowing our states greatest achievement to be destroyed by the the venal monsters that occupy our halls of power.
I didn't use the word Cretin. It's not a term I would use.
Again , sorry for getting OTT but I'm at the
point of exploding about the govt.
Wiseman_Vaughn
Well-known member
It's ok. Apology accepted. We all get hot under the collar about this stuff. I recently saw first hand the state it is in when a very close relative died in their hands.
Osboro
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Bristolboro
Well-known member
It is the best thing about this country.. and always attached by the right because it is built on a socialist principle. Invest more in it, protect it at all costs.
Go down the path of private insurance and we will end up like the US, for sure. The complete marketization of human ill-health. Disgusting. Don't let it happen.
Go down the path of private insurance and we will end up like the US, for sure. The complete marketization of human ill-health. Disgusting. Don't let it happen.
There are a lot of good points in this thread. I think everyone agrees the NHS is underfunded, but - in the short term - pouring loads more money in is not really going to help. The NHS is being asked to treat people for conditions in 2023 that were unknown in the 1950s, using equipment that didn't exist in the 1950s and drugs that didn't exist in the 1950s. I don't think Nye Bevan was considering sex change ops, or gastric band surgery or immunotherapy, chemotherapy or any of these types of treatment which cost huge amounts of money when he blueprinted the NHS.
So another question is whether the NHS should offer every conceivable treatment, or focus on what 99% of the people will need over a lifetime?
For clarity, I am not advocating cessation of critical cancer treatment or similar, just focusing the NHS on what will keep people alive and healthy.
So another question is whether the NHS should offer every conceivable treatment, or focus on what 99% of the people will need over a lifetime?
For clarity, I am not advocating cessation of critical cancer treatment or similar, just focusing the NHS on what will keep people alive and healthy.
Wiseman_Vaughn
Well-known member
Good post! Very interesting points. People living longer and new kinds of treatment have definitely changed things since it started
Scrote
Well-known member
This is what NICE is for.
They try to balance cost against effectiveness and general social wellbeing.
They also look at the evidence around treatments and their side-effects to aid with decision making in what gets delivered by the NHS.
Most of the news stories about people being denied critical cancer treatments when they have to fund-raise to be treated elsewhere involve NICE somewhere along the line.
There is a need for managing the financial burden on the NHS and there is a body that deals with it.
If you really care about it you can get involved:
NICE Website
asredastheycome
Well-known member
Can't agree with this when Trusts are asking people to pay up for ops to beat the queues. Where are these additional doctors coming from and are the OPs being carried out using NHS facilities.
It's one of the finest things we have in this country don't dilute.
festa5
Well-known member
That's part of the problem. It won't help much in the short term but in the long term serious investment is needed up front. Of course the Tories don't give a **** about the long term.
To the Tories being more efficient is about spending as little as possible. But serious investment would actually save money in the long term. There's loads of ways the NHS could be more efficient, but proper investment up front and a long term plan (incorporating everything: social care, public health etc) developed by experts, not politicians, is what's needed.