The NHS’s Latest Hits

Mike, what news is there from the wonderful UK healthcare system?  Glad you asked:

The full extent of the horrific conditions at an NHS hospital where hundreds may have died because of ‘appalling’ care was laid bare yesterday.

Dehydrated patients were forced to drink out of flower vases, while others were left in soiled linen on filthy wards.

Relatives of patients who died at Staffordshire General Hospital told how they were so worried by the standard of care they slept in chairs on the wards.

The ‘shocking’ catalogue of failures was released yesterday after an independent investigation by the Healthcare Commission.

It found Government waiting time targets and a bid to win foundation status were pursued at the expense of patient safety over a three-year period at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust.

The commission’s report - revealed in yesterday’s Daily Mail - said at least 400 deaths could not be explained, although it is feared up to 1,200 patients may have died needlessly.

This is just stunning.

Among the findings of the report were:

Receptionists carrying out initial checks on patients;

Two clinical decision units - one unstaffed - used as ‘dumping grounds’ for A&E patients to avoid missing waiting targets;

Nurses who turned off heart monitors because they didn’t understand how to use them;

Delayed operations, with some patients having surgery cancelled four days in a row and left without food, drink or medication;

Vital equipment such as heart defibrilators was not working;

A savings target of £10million met at the expense of 150 posts, including nurses.

I will grant that this is not typical of the NHS system.  But it is something that you will get when you essentially take the consumer completely out of the loop.

But let’s look at the good side—at least the kept costs down.

Feuerwaffe Kontrolle

Ten innocents were gunned down today by a crazed madman in Alabama.

A gunman on a terrifying rampage across two southern Alabama counties killed at least nine people Tuesday, including members of his own family and apparent strangers, and burned down his mother’s home before shooting himself at a metals plant, authorities said.

Police were investigating shootings in at least four different locations in several communities, all of which were believed to be the work of a single gunman who had not yet been identified by investigators.

The afternoon of bloodshed began in Kinston, near the Alabama-Florida border, where the shooter burned down his mother’s house, according to the Coffee County coroner, Robert Preachers. Officials located the woman’s body inside the house, but they had not been able to get inside the still-burning house to determine if he shot her first.

The gunman then headed east, into Geneva County, where he shot and killed five people—four adults and a child—at a home in the nearby town of Samson. Then he killed one person each in two other homes. The identities of all the victims were unknown, but Preachers said they included other members of the shooter’s family.

“He started in his mother’s house,” Preachers said. “Then he went to Samson and he killed his granny and granddaddy and aunt and uncle.”

“We don’t know what triggered it,” Preachers added.

The gunman also shot at a state trooper’s car, striking the vehicle seven times and wounding the trooper with broken glass.

He then killed someone at a Samson supply store, and another person at a service station.

When, oh when, are we going to learn the abject stupidity of allowing so many guns in America?  When are we going to adopt a more logical, civilized, rational approach to guns?  Why don’t we just ban them like they do in Europe, so that this sort of thing can never happen?

At least 10 people have been killed in a shooting at a school in south-west Germany, police say.

A number of people are also thought to have been wounded in the attack at the Albertville school in Winnenden, north of Stuttgart.

Police say the gunman, who was reported to have been wearing black combat gear, has fled into the town.

A major search is underway, and police and rescue workers are at the secondary school.

“We have at least nine dead and numerous injured,” a police spokeswoman said.

The editor of the local paper, Frank Nipkau, told television channel N-TV that eight pupils and two adults were among the dead.

It’s the latest gun control success!