Vocal Voices

I thought I remembered a story about the NHS, so I googled it.

Sure enough, I found it in the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09 ... udy-warns/

What it says is that the number of beds available in the NHS has more than halved in 30 years, and that NHS trusts want to cut more beds!

In 1987 the NHS had 299,000 beds. in 2017 that had dropped to 142,000. This, at a time when the population has gone up by 16% and the number of pensioners has increased by by one third.

This is surely crazy. Under governments of both complexions the number of beds has goe down while the population has gone up. The complaint you always hear is that there aren't enough beds for patients. Well there wouldn't be, would there?

Knowing this, to call ill, elderly people "bed blockers" is especially nasty. It isn't their fault some bright spark has made sure there aren't enough beds for sick people. People lying on trollies because there aren't enough beds? Ditto.

Why do all these stories on the TV news never mention that the number of beds has halved? It has a major bearing on all the crisis / gloom and doom stuff we get every night.

Awful, isn't it? Like you I really dislike the term "bed blockers", these are poorly and/or vulnerable people

I find the phrase offensive too.

I have become sick and tired of the reporting in the media, especially the broadcast media, and especially the BBC, insinuating that individual hospitals and their staff are always to blame.

We know that there is poor management of some hospitals and that many of them have systems in operation that are barely fit for purpose, but they are not the fault of the medical staff. They are sometimes not the fault of local management who are often working to rules laid down by trust headquarters and they are in turn working to rules from politicians and civil servants in the Dept of Health.

Problems in A&E units, who describe themselves as 'inundated' or 'overwhelmed', are not that surprising, but to blame the staff only deflects from the problems of why they are inundated and what can be done about it.

No real surprise there then. The number of people keep going up but the money never rises as fast. Then there are the treatments which are "elective" but cannot be cut off...

So they stress the system and wait for something to break..

The BBC six o'clock news led with this story again, for ten minutes.

MrsC and I got to thinking about it. In our home city of Wakefield and nearby, we used to have quite a few hospitals. Here's what happened.
Clayton Hospital - closed.
Snapethorpe hospital - closed.
Ackton hospital - closed.
Stanley Royd mental hospital - closed.
Pinderfields hospital - demolished and rebuilt under PFI, with fewer beds than the old hospital.
Pontefract hospital - demolished and rebuilt under PFI, with fewer beds than the old hospital.

The fact is that reducing the number of beds available has been official NHS policy for more than thirty years, and it's about time the TV stopped weeping and wailing about the current crisis and started asking why this has been allowed to happen!

It is! Going back to the so-called "bed blockers" (ugh ) there used to be lots of convalescent homes, those have gone. We need them now, more than ever, to free up hospital beds.

When Mrs O broke her leg after a fall back in Sutton Coldfield a while back, she was admitted to and operated on at the local hospital. Within six months or so, they'd closed two general wards including the ward she was on (40 beds?). If she had broken her leg again under the new regime, it would have meant dealing with Solihull Hospital, an hour's bus ride away.

These reductions have been steadily going on for years .....

Meanwhile Tesco and Sainsbury's are following Morrisons and Asda and doing away with thousands of low and mid management jobs having discovered that they are not necessary for the smooth functioning of their businesses (Trusts). Maybe someone from the DoH should pop round for a briefing. They might also ask about IT systems and central purchasing while they are there.

Throwing money at the NHS will never be the answer if it is not running efficiently.

That's just it Frank, they can throw as many millions at it as they like but if hospitals are being poorly managed, which they are, then it's pointless.

Out nearest hospital is Stafford but it's just a shell of what it was before the Mid-Staffs trust was dissolved, the majority of the wards are closed. Joe only had his surgery there because he's always been treated there. Mid Staffs was divided up though so where we are, in the Cannock area which is south of Stafford, now falls under the Royal Wolverhampton Trust meaning that New Cross is our designated hospital. However, while Stafford stands there virtually empty, New Cross now has to deal with Christ knows how many extra patients from the Cannock area stretching the services there.

A&E is a particular problem because Stafford lost it's 24 hour department, something which was supposedly only a temporary closure for a matter of a few weeks due to staffing problems and several years later it's still only open between 8am and 10pm and that's just for over 16 year olds, the only facility for under 16s there is a minor injuries department. So for 10 hours a day (or 24 for children!) it's unavailable and anyone needing to use it has to go and clog up the emergency department at another hospital.