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.
Comments
So why post it?
So it’s okay for Moore to show isolated horrible incidents in “Sicko” to “show” that our system of capitalized medicine is broken, but we can’t talk about far more widespread horrible incidents in socialized medicine systems to show how they might be broken as well? How does THAT logic make sense? Moore took tiny snippets of things and made them seem huge, and that’s okay. But MikeS talks about the findings of a national commission that investigated and found a depth of horrors going on in Britain’s health care, but because it doesn’t hold true EVERYWHERE in Britain, that’s not okay?
Your logic is faulty at best, and I think you know it.
Once you take corporations and profits out of the picture, it is all rainbows and butterflies. :)
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"I will grant that this is not typical of the NHS system.”
So why post it?